Brainwaves of Sken

I am not always a great person. Some of you might rolls your eyes at that and say, “Seriously. Hello.” and some of you might be surprised. Regardless, I try to not to bullshit myself.

I’ve talked about the way I try to live, and how I try to be aware of myself, my actions, and other people, but I’m fully capable of rationalization, pettiness, and lashing out. They’re things I dislike and constantly monitor, but they happen.

I don’t flip out and decide I’m suddenly horrible, I just try to put some procedures in place so I don’t do it again, and I move on. Guilt is only as important as its capacity to make you change, and is otherwise totally unproductive. Sometimes those procedures don’t work – time to try again, right?

I do, however, apologize for my actions and words. I apologize (sincerely) when I’ve hurt someone’s feelings and they’ve made me aware of it. I try to show them (and their feelings) respect by taking seriously the effort to be aware of the repercussions of my decisions and actions on other people. Sometimes I screw that up, too, but most people don’t even try. Generally, people don’t take time out of their busy lives to consider what they’re doing until everything falls apart.

And that’s the thing that always gets to me, when someone is really riding my tail. Where is their outrage for the beasts of their world, the rainy-day friends and assholes? Apparently they are who they are, it’s easier not to be disappointed when one doesn’t have high expectations. My ability to properly weigh out my sense of shame or guilt is often thrown askew when someone I care about decides to put logs on my flames.

This is something I’ve mulled over for years. What do I do when I’ve debased myself over my past mistakes, attempted corrections and new behaviors, and I find that days/months/years later the mud is still being slung?

I’ve never really had an answer for this. The critical remark I hear most often from friends is that I take the opinions of others too much to heart. I presume that because someone else believes me to be cruel, incompetent, greedy, or shallow that I must be those things in order for them to believe it.

That day is done, today, right now. I know I listen with as fair a mind as I can muster when someone has a problem with me. I know that I am not arrogant, and that I don’t cover my ass – if I’ve got an explanation, it’s genuine, and I don’t believe an explanation is an excuse.

I know that I am straight-forward, that I do not enjoy playing mental games with others, and that it is reasonable to expect the same in return.

I’ve been known to endure the most vicious mud-slinging, both direct and indirect. I’ve maintained friendships and kept communication lines open with people whose opinions of me are clearly low, and for whom no amount of change will correct.

This bitterness has affected me, as some will attest to. Because those mud-slingers are people who have been my friends, I have twisted my mind around until I could see myself the way they saw me. And then I hated me.

I’m done listening. I am a good person. I make mistakes, but I am honest about my feelings and my intentions, I am strong enough to agree when I’m wrong and take the deserved flak, and I am humble enough to believe that I can always be a better person.

If I’ve apologized sincerely, and done what I can to behave differently, and mud is still being heaped upon my back, I will allow myself to believe that there is such a thing as too much. I will allow myself to understand that it is possible to shoulder too much blame, and I will allow myself to understand that for some people, I will never climb out of that hole, and they like it that way.

This is a post I will have to return to many times, because this is very difficult for me to stick with.

I question myself all of the time and when someone taps into my own self-criticism, it is poison dripped into my ear. Oh, and passive-aggressive remarks? DONE. I should not have to ‘catch’, nameless remarks made about me in public, remarks I can’t defend myself against (“oh, I didn’t mean you!“); I won’t. I’ll walk away. It’s disrespectful and malicious. That’s not the way that people who care about each other should behave.

My sense of self-preservation has finally gotten around to this complex and scary topic. I am allowed to walk away, having paid my penance, without carrying a burden I’ve already paid for. I am allowed to see the desire to lay that burden upon me as both sad and cruel, even if I was wrong in the first place. Part of me is as afraid as ever, but I am resolved that I will not be punished beyond my due, and I will no longer lend my ear to those who enjoy causing me such distress.

(I struggled with whether to post this. My reasons for doing so are both as a record of my own resolve, and to share these feelings and resolutions with those people I care about, who are interested in these things. That may be misconstrued as an attempt to slam peeps – that isn’t the intent, this is about an important decision I am making in my life. I’m going to keep it public anyway, because I think it is right to do so.)

Meanwhile, to thank you for reading this far, here’s a kitten!

And you can speak your mind
But not on my time
I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life
Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone

~ by Skennedy on December 27, 2006.

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