My Worst.
I've had this blog idea in my head now for what feels like an eternity. Simply put, I think it's something I need to say, and I think I'm at a point where I'm finally ready to say it.... or at least confront it.
I feel like this is going to be a rambling of thoughts and words, and that no matter how I organize it, it's going to come out as word vomit, so here goes....
It goes back to roughly the Fall Semester of 2009. A lot of things were going down, and there was a lot on my plate at one time. I just remember feeling like things were off, but I brushed it aside and put it in a box, not really thinking about it. At the end of it, I just guessed it was because my life was going through a strong round of changes and it was my mind beginning to process it all.
Fast forward a year, and things didn't get much better. If anything they got worse. Slowly but surely I started feeling like I was almost on the outside looking in at my own life, and things were going on without me. Even though no one ever told me this, I felt like I was being left out of things on purpose, or that people were doing things or telling me things to make me happy, when in reality it wasn't what they truly wanted to do. In other words, what they were doing was to make me happy, not them. Of course none of this was true, but no matter how much I told myself it wasn't, I couldn't and wouldn't believe it.
It was as if things that had no effect on my life were affecting my life. Why should I care that my friends got things for Christmas and I didn't? What should I care that they got to hang out with each other, while members of my family forgot about my birthday? Why did these things matter more to me than anything else?
Of course I had no answers for them. But like everything else, I put it into a box, and attempted to forget about it.
I could feel myself falling into this hole of despair, and with that I craved, wanted, desired that all the attention was on me. It didn't matter if it was positive or negative, I had to have all of the attention. I also had to know everything that was going on. It was like I needed to know what all was happening around me to feel included, to fit in amongst my peers. It sounds stupid reading it on this screen, but it was as if to feel validated as a person, to feel like I was included, this was what I had to feel.... I had to know everything.
I then started to feel guilty about it. That hole, that funk, still existed in some way, and by doing things, I almost felt worse. So I thought that by talking about and sharing the problems I was facing, it would help to ease the pain, ease the hurt. The only thing that did in some aspects.... well, most aspects really... was validate the pain. It didn't ease the pain, it just validated it. It's like a hug, if you will... the feelings of a hug that were only present for the moment. I'd feel better, but the feeling would just come back all on its own.
I would go through these cycles where all I wanted to do was talk... talk about everything, anything really..... and then I'd go into silence. It was an up-and-down motion, all seemingly looking for attention and validation for my feelings, to know that how I felt was how I felt.
I wanted to be accepted by my friends, by my peers. I didn't know what to do, and I felt that just "being myself" wasn't enough. I felt like I had to uphold this persona, a persona that wasn't true to myself and true to who I wanted to be. I was hiding a lot of things from people for quite some time, and the more I hid things, the more I had to cover up, to the point where I just became more lost and confused. I also had this ever-present mindset from others, where I couldn't show weakness, I couldn't show fear.... I had to be a man, and stand up and rise to the occasion. In reality, I just wanted to sit and disappear into the dark corner..... and make everyone know I wanted to go to that dark corner.
It wasn't until recently that I found myself realizing that this was truly the case. After moving back to California in July of 2012, I found myself for the first time without those closest to me. And it was then that I started to wonder if they truly missed me, if they actually missed having me around. I wondered what would happen if I discontinued contact with them for periods of time, or what would happen if I just disappeared. I wasn't present-day in their lives anymore, and our contact would primarily exist over mediums like the Internet or Texting or Phone Conversations or Skype Conversations.
I pushed through it, trying to figure it out. I became ever-present by my phone, not wanting to miss a single second of what they were going through. It truly wasn't healthy at all. I was back to the stage where I had to know everything that was going on. I pretended not to want to know, being okay with not knowing, but internally it ate me alive at times. It's like I felt like I had to know what was going on to be there, to be present in the moment.... and through that, my mind twisted it to be that by knowing that information, my friends were showing me they actually wanted me to be there... and that they actually missed me. Nothing else mattered.
I don't know when the switch flipped. I don't know if it was gradual and I realized it, or if I woke up one morning and realized it, but it slapped me in the face almost, and it was at that point I realized that things had to change. What I was doing was incredibly unhealthy, and this mindset I had needed to change.
It's not always about me. It can't always be about me. It shouldn't always be about me.
That is okay.
What things I can control, I can work on. What I can't control.... well, I simply can't control it. But not everything is about me. Which means.....
Not everything said to me is a direct reflection of me.
Not everything said to me is meant to hurt me.
Not everything said to me is about me at all.
I had a customer call into the store on Tuesday. There was a problem regarding the registration on the vehicle she bought, and she'd had trouble getting that taken care of. We did some research on the topic, and found out the problem, and I communicated that to the customer, and due to the time passed, told them what they had to do. They weren't happy at all, and the resulting conversation was one filled with tons of profanity in my direction and threats about how the place I work for is a bunch of "crooks" which obviously isn't true. After that conversation, quite naturally I felt like the smallest person on the planet, and I could feel the same old story creeping back into my mind.
"It's your fault she has this issue."
"You did this to her. You screwed this up."
"You probably just cost CarMax some business. Good job."
Now, obviously, to the regular person this would seem bogus in nature and ridiculous at best. But to me, I had to get through this point. I basically talked myself out of these thoughts for a full 30 minutes after that phone conversation, finally reaching a point where I realized it was okay..... that people would be upset, but that if I did everything I could, and learn from the mistake of others.... I could prevent something like this from happening further down the line.
I want to be at the point where I don't get anxious whenever I have to confront an issue. I don't want to have a panic attack when I raise my hand to talk at an office meeting. I want to be able to feel like I fit in among my peers, and not worry about people walking on eggshells around me. I want to be at the point where I accept that mistakes happen and that I will make them, and not feel like an idiot and beat myself up for the mistakes I make.
In order to keep myself accountable I have to actually say these things now. I can't keep putting things in a box and hoping they disappear. That's the cause to the problem, and by not confronting the cause, all I'm doing is burying it under piles and piles of.... well, problems. To fix the problem, you hit the cause. You don't just hit the problem.
I know now that I can't rely on pity and sympathy to make it through a period. If anything, I have to potentially put myself in a vulnerable position to keep myself accountable and aware of what I'm doing. I've started the process by being a better friend, and now I just have to be a better person overall. It may take the occasional slap in the face to know that I'm slipping back into old habits. It may take a friend confronting me and saying "I love you, but you're screwing up.... you're screwing up, and it's hurting me, and you need to fix it."
All I know is that I have to work my butt off to get what I want, and that I can't be afraid of what I don't know. Happiness is what I seek, and it's something I want to get. Life won't always be rainbows and sunshine, but there shouldn't be this dark cloud over my life either. I've been comfortable all too long in my life, and now I need to not necessarily always be comfortable. Effectively, it's time to fix things, and I may not always know the road I'm traveling down.
If you read this all the way through, awesome.You may be holding me accountable for my actions. Don't be afraid to tell it to me straight.
I feel like this is going to be a rambling of thoughts and words, and that no matter how I organize it, it's going to come out as word vomit, so here goes....
It goes back to roughly the Fall Semester of 2009. A lot of things were going down, and there was a lot on my plate at one time. I just remember feeling like things were off, but I brushed it aside and put it in a box, not really thinking about it. At the end of it, I just guessed it was because my life was going through a strong round of changes and it was my mind beginning to process it all.
Fast forward a year, and things didn't get much better. If anything they got worse. Slowly but surely I started feeling like I was almost on the outside looking in at my own life, and things were going on without me. Even though no one ever told me this, I felt like I was being left out of things on purpose, or that people were doing things or telling me things to make me happy, when in reality it wasn't what they truly wanted to do. In other words, what they were doing was to make me happy, not them. Of course none of this was true, but no matter how much I told myself it wasn't, I couldn't and wouldn't believe it.
It was as if things that had no effect on my life were affecting my life. Why should I care that my friends got things for Christmas and I didn't? What should I care that they got to hang out with each other, while members of my family forgot about my birthday? Why did these things matter more to me than anything else?
Of course I had no answers for them. But like everything else, I put it into a box, and attempted to forget about it.
I could feel myself falling into this hole of despair, and with that I craved, wanted, desired that all the attention was on me. It didn't matter if it was positive or negative, I had to have all of the attention. I also had to know everything that was going on. It was like I needed to know what all was happening around me to feel included, to fit in amongst my peers. It sounds stupid reading it on this screen, but it was as if to feel validated as a person, to feel like I was included, this was what I had to feel.... I had to know everything.
I then started to feel guilty about it. That hole, that funk, still existed in some way, and by doing things, I almost felt worse. So I thought that by talking about and sharing the problems I was facing, it would help to ease the pain, ease the hurt. The only thing that did in some aspects.... well, most aspects really... was validate the pain. It didn't ease the pain, it just validated it. It's like a hug, if you will... the feelings of a hug that were only present for the moment. I'd feel better, but the feeling would just come back all on its own.
I would go through these cycles where all I wanted to do was talk... talk about everything, anything really..... and then I'd go into silence. It was an up-and-down motion, all seemingly looking for attention and validation for my feelings, to know that how I felt was how I felt.
I wanted to be accepted by my friends, by my peers. I didn't know what to do, and I felt that just "being myself" wasn't enough. I felt like I had to uphold this persona, a persona that wasn't true to myself and true to who I wanted to be. I was hiding a lot of things from people for quite some time, and the more I hid things, the more I had to cover up, to the point where I just became more lost and confused. I also had this ever-present mindset from others, where I couldn't show weakness, I couldn't show fear.... I had to be a man, and stand up and rise to the occasion. In reality, I just wanted to sit and disappear into the dark corner..... and make everyone know I wanted to go to that dark corner.
It wasn't until recently that I found myself realizing that this was truly the case. After moving back to California in July of 2012, I found myself for the first time without those closest to me. And it was then that I started to wonder if they truly missed me, if they actually missed having me around. I wondered what would happen if I discontinued contact with them for periods of time, or what would happen if I just disappeared. I wasn't present-day in their lives anymore, and our contact would primarily exist over mediums like the Internet or Texting or Phone Conversations or Skype Conversations.
I pushed through it, trying to figure it out. I became ever-present by my phone, not wanting to miss a single second of what they were going through. It truly wasn't healthy at all. I was back to the stage where I had to know everything that was going on. I pretended not to want to know, being okay with not knowing, but internally it ate me alive at times. It's like I felt like I had to know what was going on to be there, to be present in the moment.... and through that, my mind twisted it to be that by knowing that information, my friends were showing me they actually wanted me to be there... and that they actually missed me. Nothing else mattered.
I don't know when the switch flipped. I don't know if it was gradual and I realized it, or if I woke up one morning and realized it, but it slapped me in the face almost, and it was at that point I realized that things had to change. What I was doing was incredibly unhealthy, and this mindset I had needed to change.
It's not always about me. It can't always be about me. It shouldn't always be about me.
That is okay.
What things I can control, I can work on. What I can't control.... well, I simply can't control it. But not everything is about me. Which means.....
Not everything said to me is a direct reflection of me.
Not everything said to me is meant to hurt me.
Not everything said to me is about me at all.
I had a customer call into the store on Tuesday. There was a problem regarding the registration on the vehicle she bought, and she'd had trouble getting that taken care of. We did some research on the topic, and found out the problem, and I communicated that to the customer, and due to the time passed, told them what they had to do. They weren't happy at all, and the resulting conversation was one filled with tons of profanity in my direction and threats about how the place I work for is a bunch of "crooks" which obviously isn't true. After that conversation, quite naturally I felt like the smallest person on the planet, and I could feel the same old story creeping back into my mind.
"It's your fault she has this issue."
"You did this to her. You screwed this up."
"You probably just cost CarMax some business. Good job."
Now, obviously, to the regular person this would seem bogus in nature and ridiculous at best. But to me, I had to get through this point. I basically talked myself out of these thoughts for a full 30 minutes after that phone conversation, finally reaching a point where I realized it was okay..... that people would be upset, but that if I did everything I could, and learn from the mistake of others.... I could prevent something like this from happening further down the line.
I want to be at the point where I don't get anxious whenever I have to confront an issue. I don't want to have a panic attack when I raise my hand to talk at an office meeting. I want to be able to feel like I fit in among my peers, and not worry about people walking on eggshells around me. I want to be at the point where I accept that mistakes happen and that I will make them, and not feel like an idiot and beat myself up for the mistakes I make.
In order to keep myself accountable I have to actually say these things now. I can't keep putting things in a box and hoping they disappear. That's the cause to the problem, and by not confronting the cause, all I'm doing is burying it under piles and piles of.... well, problems. To fix the problem, you hit the cause. You don't just hit the problem.
I know now that I can't rely on pity and sympathy to make it through a period. If anything, I have to potentially put myself in a vulnerable position to keep myself accountable and aware of what I'm doing. I've started the process by being a better friend, and now I just have to be a better person overall. It may take the occasional slap in the face to know that I'm slipping back into old habits. It may take a friend confronting me and saying "I love you, but you're screwing up.... you're screwing up, and it's hurting me, and you need to fix it."
All I know is that I have to work my butt off to get what I want, and that I can't be afraid of what I don't know. Happiness is what I seek, and it's something I want to get. Life won't always be rainbows and sunshine, but there shouldn't be this dark cloud over my life either. I've been comfortable all too long in my life, and now I need to not necessarily always be comfortable. Effectively, it's time to fix things, and I may not always know the road I'm traveling down.
If you read this all the way through, awesome.
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