Sometimes, I am too sensitive and too defensive and I take everything way too personally. I often am torn between the side of me that really doesn’t care what people think and the other side, the side that wants people to like her.
I have been thinking about this for a few weeks, since Deanna at My Place in the Stars posted the post about worrying about what people think of her. I can’t decide how I feel. I mean, yes, I care what people think of me, but there’s a side of my that could give a shit, too. Generally, I think that I am pretty open to everyone at first, that I try to like most people and want most people to like me.
But when I start to get to know someone, it changes. For example, if I meet someone and they annoy me in the first five minutes, I tend to be blunt so they’ll leave me alone. Or I try to ignore them so they stop talking to me. These are the people that I could give a shit about when I go home and think about the people in my life and who I really want to be here.
Then there’s always a point in any relationship or friendship where something goes wrong. A fight, a misunderstanding, a break up, a lie. Regardless of whether or not I am the cause of the problem, I try to fix it. I try to say the right thing, do something to show them that I care, or get lost in a chain of emails trying to work things out. I think back over my life and the things that I have tried to work out, and there’s a lot. Me and the Corporal breaking up and how hard I tried to work out some kind of friendship with him, something that finally finally happened four long years later. When I started school and everything got crazy with me and Deanna and Flava and MD, I tried to explain to them how I was feeling and me and Deanna went back and forth for days with emails explaining how we felt because we both knew deep down we still loved each other and we wanted things to be ok. When things got to a point I couldn’t handle anymore with Bio Boy, I told him everything and, although it was weird for a few weeks, things worked out and are better than they were before because there’s no tension now. Even with me and my mom, we fought it out and worked everything out and now we’re better than ever.
But I find that I always read into things too much when I do care about what someone thinks of me. Like when people try to switch out of a class they were in with me, I automatically assume that it’s because they don’t want to have class with me, not that they just car pool with someone in another section. Or when Kevin gave me his number and I entered it wrong and I thought he gave me the wrong number on purpose. Or when I have plans to go out with friends at night and it’s five o’clock and no one’s called me yet, I’m convinced they all forgot about me and went somewhere without me. Or when people that I used to be friends with don’t send me MySpace friend requests. Or when I call someone and they don’t answer the phone. Or when I text someone and they don’t text me back.
I find that these insecurities only come when I really do care about someone, and I don’t just mean with men in a romantic sense, I mean friendships, too. I fight to fix it, to assure myself that I did all I could do, and to make everything better. Granted, sometimes “better” doesn’t mean “the same”, it may mean getting to a different place or level, but at the end of the day, it’s accepting someone’s place in my life and being glad that they still want to be there, and being confident that I know that they know that I still want them to be around tomorrow.
Sometimes, things can’t be fixed. Well, actively fixed, I think everything eventually fixes itself over time. But I have a hard time when I can’t make things “normal” again. I tend to dwell on it for way too long and then, when I finally realize that I can’t do anything about it, give it up all together. Because that’s what’s easiest for me.
At some point, I realize I need to get over this whole fear of getting hurt. Because that’s what it’s all about, I think, that’s why I turn off when I can’t get things to be “normal”, because it’s easier to do that than to admit that something changed to the point where it can never get to the “I’m sorry that happened, but I still love you” stage. But, then I look back at all the incidents I mentioned before, and everything did work out. Me and Deanna and Nikki are friends again and we know how much we love each other, even if we don’t see each other all that often. Bio Boy and I are closer than we used to be and in the right way. Me and the Corporal are back to frequent phone calls and calling each other “butthead”, but there’s no tension because it’s finally how it was supposed to be, we’re getting back to being real, true friends with nothing complicating it. Kevin grabbed my phone off of me and made sure I had the right number because I was crazy to think he gave me the wrong one. Sometimes people don’t answer the phone or get back to me because they’re busy, and MySpace friend requests are not the be all and end all of everything.
I have to learn to stop personalizing everything and thinking that everything can be fixed if I only find the right thing to say. Because somethings can’t be fixed, and I have to learn that is ok.
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