No. I’m not going to post about the current political situation. It sucks. End of story.

Moving on to more important things: personal drama.

“Why do you let what people think about you bother you?” I cannot count the number of times I have been asked that in my life. I am only now beginning to be slightly articulate in my answer, though it is still inadequate. People’s thoughts about me bother me because people matter to me. At the very core of who I am is the belief that people matter. That is a big chunk of why I am going into an inter-personal heavy career. People, and what they think, matter to me. Period. Even when I’m angry at/with them. So I obsess about what is going on in my inter-personal relationships. It is just what I do. That being said, lets get into some rambly, round and about background information so I can hopefully make a point without having to do something silly like, be direct.

I was told earlier today (see, here we get back to the “people matter to me” theme), [paraphrased slightly] “You have such a negative view of yourself that you cannot fathom someone envying you. It’s not that it breaks your head, it is that it just doesn’t enter into your mind. You have a full and complete view of your life and you know about all the bad stuff. So you don’t understand that from the outside, all people can see is that right now your life is really great in ways that lots of other people would like to have.” Hm. Yeah. Although, it does break my head when I try to wrap my brain around people envying me. ” Dear lord–you envy me? Why?” Ok, honestly I have a few things right now at this moment that I can understand how some people might envy me. When I stop and think about it, I envy me. How in the hell did this all come about?! But I’m digressing again. I have a horrible view of myself. Horrible, terrible, awful, no good, very bad view of myself. I think of myself as a mean, spiteful, negative, abrasive person. And I often cry thinking about how much I suck. When I am having days of particularly high self-esteem for me I go back over my actual behavior and notice that I’m not actually mean. I am almost never spiteful (and everyone has moments–I mean geez). I am actually incredibly positive and I am told often that I have good people skills, so there goes abrasive. Which is not to say that I am an easy pill to swallow. I am very sharp. That is the word I like the best to describe myself. I am not soft and warm and fuzzy. But I am affectionate, and loyal, and damn willing to go to the mat for anyone who matters to me. I really love people and I work damn hard on my relationships in general. I spend in fact, too much time and energy on people. Cause they rock. 🙂

So, I’m trying like hell to build up an image of myself that is at least somewhat possitive. This is not an easy climb for me. I’ve already posted at length about “oh poor me and my crappy childhood” so I’m going to leave that record off the player. Suffice to say: we all have our demons to fight. Mine involve low self-esteem and bad self-image and such. I have a pretty spectacular temper to go along with my insecurities and personal baggage. I talked to my best friend Anna yesterday about a recent experience I had with anger. I told her the details and the summation of me feeling really upset. She asked me, “Did you call the person a name or turn and walk away?” “I walked away.” “Uh oh… that means you were really really really angry.” yup. Basically. When I pass a certain level of being irritated into being angry, I need to walk away. I need to or I will do physical damage to the person I am angry with. It is much better for everyone in the whole wide world for me to just walk away. It is taking the high road. It is being an adult and dealing with my emotions on my own and not making them anyone else’s problem. The thing is: I get angry. Then I walk away. And I fume. And I bluster to myself (sometimes to other people depending on the situation). Then, I calm down. Then, I realize I’m being kinda stupid. Then, I come back and say… “Uhm… yeah. This situation isn’t so good. Can we fix it?” Most of the time, I don’t sound terribly contrite when I do it, cause I’m still kinda blustery (and also there is that “sharp” thing) but I’m not one for saying things I don’t mean. I just don’t do social niceties well. If I say I’m sorry–I really mean it. If I say I want to fix something–I mean it. The problem is, sometimes I probably need to be told, “You say ‘Can we fix it’ but you sound like ‘You bitch it is all your fault and you should kiss my ass.’ and that isn’t ok.” Cause I probably do sound like that. It isn’t anyone else’s problem or responsibility to tell me this, but I’m human and I don’t do everything perfectly and being told that I’m screwing up helps me to try and make progress. Cause I realy do want to make progress.

I have my baggage. Unfortunately though, big chunks of them look like trash bags–so other people don’t recognize them as baggage. They think I am just taking out the trash and no big deal. No, actually, I keep that baggage. I don’t know how to let it go. So this means that sometimes, someone will come along and kick a piece of my baggage, thinking that they are just clearing a walkway. But no, you bastard! You kicked my baggage! And I get upset. And I try to walk away and calm down. Sometimes, I don’t do this in the most reasonable way. I really really really suck at saying in the moment, “I just need to calm down and I will talk to you later.” Because I will calm down. I’m pretty remarkable like that. I get over things fairly easily actually. I hold very few grudges. Although when I do, I am freakin psycho about it. Don’t even bring up Erin Stagnero. Fucking bitch.

But anyway. Yeah. I deal with shit. I move on. Just ask Yani. I was mad at her about something I didn’t know how to talk to her about. So I kind of disappeared for a bit. Then, like a bad penny, I turned up. Saying, “Hey, I know I suck and everything–but do you still have any interest in being my friend?” Sometimes it doesn’t happen as rapidly as people would like, but it happens. I am very serious in my loyalties. Very Serious. Once I have decided that someone matters, they matter no matter what. Even if I get mad at them sometimes. I take people into my heart, and they are stuck. They have to push me away really really hard before I will go away. Jenny didn’t manage to get rid of me. I kept after her, and now… years later… I live with her! Awesome. And to think, we didn’t talk much for five years. Didn’t matter. I still loved her. I do that. I love people.

There was more I wanted to say. But in reviewing the post, it doesn’t seem like a good idea. Discretion is the better part of valor and such. *sigh* I fucking hate that.