last night a girl who was past tipsy told me that she is surprised to find that she really likes me, because she had heard that i am kind of harsh. and it made me so sad!
i don't know how, but i seem to give off the impression that i am pretty confident. which is a gross overstatement of the facts, which are that i am actually shy and awkward with strangers. i don't usually know how to relate to people that i don't know, which is why most of my dearest friends are the people who took me in or made an effort towards me or just showed me that they loved me from the start. i know, it's a tall order. and a protective measure.
since grade two, when i found out a friend's mom disapproved of me (for being too headstrong? slightly rebellious? a natural liar?), i have two intense, subconscious fears that colour all my interactions:
1. being disapproved of
2. being misunderstood
yes, the two go hand in hand, like best friends on the playground. i have an inherent distrust of adults (which i have started to work through, maybe because i am now one myself...what?!). i lack discipline and can't seem to surrender to authority. but i am trying to overcome these things.
my sister, five years my junior (an eternity in my younger days) once told me that some of her friends found me intimidating. this shocked me, but it shouldn't have. i wasn't really all that nice to my sister or her friends. i don't know why. i regret it. it wasn't really about them, is the thing. i am just a classic self-absorbed, emotional artist-type, so wrapped up in my own things that sometimes i forget to see people. also, i find it hard to trust people. not because i assume some flaw in them (although occasionally this is the case), but probably because of some deep-seeded sense of shame or the idea that there is something wrong with me, that i will inevitably be disapproved of. it's not logical, but it still is.
perhaps it's this subconscious feeling that drives my intense desire for non-confrontation in all things. i'm not very good at sharing...my feelings, my things, anything! my go-to response throughout the jungle of teenagedom was "i don't want to talk about it" and it was my opinion that things were better left unsaid: since words can't ever be taken back, it's best to let situations evaporate on their own. needless to say, i don't feel that way anymore, or at least i don't "feel" that way in my brain. on some level, though, i still feel that way in a deep place. but i have seen what not communicating can lead to, and i have witnessed that in spite of the botched jobs we do at relating, to deal with things is far superior to letting them fester. because things do not evaporate, really. and if they do, they come down again as acid rain.
but let's get back to the beginning: i don't want to be harsh. i want to be kind, and open, and welcoming, and nonjudgmental. i think i can do this, with some effort to not let myself give in to being the lowest common denominator, the easiest version of myself when i'm sad or wrapped up in my own thoughts or just feeling awkward. it probably gets easier. i just need to be more aware of the way that i give myself out to the world. because, believe it or not, people will form some kind of impression of you from the evidence you hand out, true or false. chris is fond of saying that i'm a tough nut to crack, but i'm sick of that. i don't want people to need special tools to get to the heart of me, i want to be willing to yield the good stuff without putting up impossible barriers. because in the end, i really do believe that human existence is doomed (and should be doomed) unless we can learn to love more, and show it more. this applies to everything.
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