Thursday, July 26, 2007

"I had Captain Crunch for breakfast, what did you have?"

Do I do this to myself? I consider myself to be a very tolerant person. I am friends with people that many other people don't like. I get faulted quite often for choosing friends that annoy my other friends. I have had roommates invite my friends to leave our apartment. Not all of my friends are like this. I have other very tolerant friends. I have friends that are very well liked. Really, I just have friends across the board. My old roommate, Snips, particularly disliked several of my friends and was very vocal about it. One day, annoyed, I decided to talk to her about it. It was a long conversation, but the basic idea was me expressing frustration at the way she treats my friends and her expressing frustration at the way my friends treat me.

Over the years I have often thought about that. I've wondered, do I let people walk all over me and treat me like dirt? I've come to grips with the fact that I let people walk all over me. I've started working on that. Well, on stopping that from happening anyway. This past year I have started growing a spine, I have started forming my own opinions, and I have started sharing them with others. I'm not perfect, and I still bow to the opinions of others at times, but I pick and choose my battles now. And I'm a lot happier knowing that I have the capability to stand up for myself. I find myself relatively free of friends that bring me down.

I thought I did all of this on my own. Turns out I only did part of it on my own. It wasn't that growing a spine suddenly changed the way people treated me. Rather, those friends moved on with life, and I gained new friends that got to know me with a spine, and hence, didn't know they could walk all over me. Or even, I started looking for friends that treated me with respect. I can't see my current friends walking over me, even if they knew they could. Anyway, point is, yesterday I became reacquainted with an old friend of mine. One that Snips seriously despised. Yesterday we had a great time catching up. Today I got slammed with the memory of how things used to be. Today I found myself in conversations I didn't want to be in. Today I was sapped of all energy as I tried over and over again to change topics to something that wouldn't turn into an argument. (Partly due to my slap in the face yesterday, I'm sure.) There was a marked difference in my happiness level as conversation and day progressed. I even resorted to changing my status to "Cheer, anyone?" in a plea to be happy again. Laser Jock replied promptly with "Hurrah for Israel!" which made me laugh out loud. Yellow came to the rescue soon after with this website which cheered me greatly. I suddenly saw the difference in the friends I have now as compared to even a year or two ago. My friends now build me up whereas my old friends tore me down. But the question now lies, do I ditch this old friend that I have been friends with for years and years? Or do I continue to let myself be subject to this emotional drain? Is there an in between?

Where is the line between befriending everyone and befriending those that fit well with me and where I am now?

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A slap in the face.

Bored at work today, I started reading writers' blogs that I haven't read in ages. Some I've never read. I was highly entertained and learned a lot more about people that I thought I knew well. So I decided it was time to fill my blog with more than the story behind my name. Immediately after I made this decision, something happened at work that made me see part of myself more clearly. A part of me I always knew was there, something my Mom would always point out to me, something that randomly gets thrown back in my face. Like I said, I've always known it to be a part of me, but somehow, I've never really seen it as a flaw. It's never been something that I felt I needed to change.

I'm a very stubborn person. When I think I'm right, I mean, really think I'm right, I will fight for it. I try to see the side of the other person. I try to be reasonable. But I stand firm to what I believe. I can be a bit argumentative at times. People often suggested I join the debate team. I've always been up for a good, healthy debate. After I matured a bit, I stopped getting angry at people for things, and tried to make debates something where we could both walk out still feeling happy and as friends. A friendly debate, if you will. Topics such as Mac vs. PC or cats vs. dogs. Every once in awhile, though, something hits too close to home and I feel this sudden desire to fight to the death. Most of the time, it's unconscious—I don't even realize I'm doing it. It's when I feel that someone or something that I am attached to has been compromised. It's when I see a close friend making stupid mistakes. When someone attacks people or ideas that I hold dear. When I feel betrayed and can't figure out why. At those moments, the realistic part of me tries desperately to surface and calm the turmoil, reaches out, and tries to honestly see the other perspective. However, that part of me clashes with the stubborn part of me that refuses to be wrong. So, I end up asking for opinions, asking for help, but whenever someone reaches back, trying to show me the other perspective, I lash out and shoot them down. In my mind, I can see their point. I accept their point. In my head, it starts forming an argument to counteract my selfish one. But it never reaches out of my head. The person trying to help me never knows that they made a difference in my opinion. All they ever see is me shooting down everything they say.

My mom received the blunt of it when I was a child. I'd ask for help on a school project, she'd give her opinions of what I could do, and I'd constantly tell her why they wouldn't work. Ofttimes, it would get to the point where we'd both be in tears and she'd threaten to stop helping me because I didn't like her ideas. What she didn't realize was that all of her ideas were swimming around my brain, putting them together so that the weaknesses of one were supplemented by the strengths of others. In the end, something of hers would mesh with something of mine, and we'd end up with something more fantastic than anything either of us had dreamed of. But it took quite the emotional strain to get there. It wasn't until later that I realized that I could have handled it much better. I could have asked for more options without shooting down every idea she had. I hope I have become better—that I treat people with more respect now. However, I realized today that I still have this unfortunate trait.

As most of you know, I'm a die-hard Harry Potter fan. I waited and waited for the fifth Harry Potter movie. I went to see it last night, giddy with anticipation and excitement. The first 5-10 minutes disappointed me greatly, and it was a downhill spiral from there. For reasons I'm too exhausted to get into here, I was sorely disappointed with the movie. I felt like I had been betrayed by a friend. I spent much of last night discussing the ills of the movie with those that I saw it with. I spent the morning arguing with my coworkers, because they felt it was the best Harry Potter movie ever. I couldn't fathom how they could believe this. So I argued the morning away. The more I argued, the more I felt I was right.

I don't know what happened, but somewhere around lunch time, I realized that I didn't want to dislike the movie, and everyone else saw good in it. I wanted to know why they thought it was so good. Perhaps it was a desperate attempt to not feel betrayed by this magical world that I've become enraptured with. So, instead of arguing why it was bad, I started asking why it was good. (This is the reasonable side trying to find peace and harmony.) However, with every reason they gave, the stubborn side of me reached out and shot it down. I couldn't accept their reasonings. Each reason, on its own, was not enough to make a good movie. It wasn't enough to make up for, what I saw, a gaping hole. Finally, truth hit good and hard in the form of a coworker saying, "If you want people to give their opinion, perhaps you shouldn't shoot down everything they say," and another quickly agreeing. That comment hit home really hard. I suddenly reverted to elementary school and working on a school project. I was taken through every conversation I've had where people get frustrated with me. I wasn't offended by any means. If anything, I am grateful that they pointed it out. This is the first time I've really realized that it is a problem. Something that I need to work on. I need to learn to let things go instead of beating them to the ground.

Thank you Mom, coworkers, and friends over the years for putting up with me and helping me see my flaws so I can overcome them.