I'm a believer in searching for one's own truth in life. I think that to follow a path because everyone else is doing so is a terrible thing to do. I also believe in true reflection. Not just pointing out all of one's good qualities but defining flaws to work on. Here is my hard truth.
I am a tough broad. I became a tough broad in response to being treated in ways I perceived to be cruel and unfair. I don't particularly like being a tough broad, but until I learn how to trust in others without giving up my well-being, it's how I have to be. I don't trust that many people. I like more people than I trust nowadays and I think I'm ok with that. I'm opinionated. I have opinions about things, but I tend not to give them unless asked or provoked. Not liking my opinions makes them neither valid nor invalid, just an opinion of one's own. I don't put up with a lot of people's garbage, but I sympathize with people who feel they have to because once upon a time, that was me.
My temper in years of late have caused me more than its fair share of problems. I'm incredibly hot-blooded and not as averse to conflict as I once was. Put in certain circumstances, this can be explosive for some people and quite enjoyable for others. My biggest flaw is that I am stubborn. If I'm right, I'm right. No two ways about it. If I choose to go down a certain path, I stay on it til the end, and as far as I can if the end isn't possible. These are all things about myself that I've come to accept are true. I know they affect how people see me and how I am approached. I don't particularly like any of these things, but I know they are true. So I do what I can to alleviate them for me and for others.
The hardest truths to accept are the ones about ourselves. That doesn't make them any less important to acknowledge. It is only by realizing everything about ourselves that we can make true progress.
RG
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Beliefs
I've been in contact with an acquaintance who is interested in becoming a closer friend. During talk, he asked me a point blank question that very few people ever ask me: "What do you believe in?"
What makes this even more unusual is that I had an answer. Something I'm going to write down here:
At the moment, positive growth. I believe in bettering myself rather than hope other people do the same. I believe in flux: the world continually changes, and so do I. I don't believe in becoming stagnant. If I'm a certain way for a long enough time, I feel an urge to just pick up and change everything. At first, it was just change of any kind. As I have grown and become more mature, I want to changes in my life to lead me in positive directions. When I do change, I want it to be because I am better serving myself and others, not just to please other people in general.
I don't believe in humanity nearly as much as I used to. There was a time when I could trust anything a given person said. That time is, thankfully, long past. But it was also the time I considered the brightest of my life so far. I want to believe as I did, but I've come to accept that I never really will, and that it's not good for me to. But still... I still want to reach a day where I can believe in the goodness of people but not depend on it. There's a lot of pain I need to work through before I get there, but I'm willing to work through it because I was a lot happier when I believed in the inherent goodness of humanity. Being a teacher is actually helping me with that. They say kids are cruel, but they are also incredibly gentle, endearing, and sweet. They're humanity at its barest essence.
I believe in being honest and loyal, but not defining myself as either one. Not anymore. I spent too much time molding myself to fit a certain lifestyle before I realized that lifestyle didn't meet my needs at all. I spent too much time holding myself and only myself to those standards and letting everyone else slide. I've learned that I can be a good person at heart and that it's ok to have flaws. I haven't fully embraced those flaws, but I'm at least much more aware of them now.
If I said these always were, are, and always will be my beliefs, I would be lying through my teeth. I tend to do an overhaul of what I stand for at least one a year. These past few years, it's happened more often. A lot has happened in my life to assess where I'm going. I became an "adult," I got a few jobs, I went to grad school,I got engaged. My life is pulling me in a few directions and, frankly, I'm not sure which way I should go. I can't say that I will keep these beliefs as I travel. But I will remember to analyze them and see which ones can help me and which ones hurt.
As far as I am concerned, these are my beliefs, for now. As I've said, I'm a creature of change. Which, ironically enough, is the only true constant about me.
RG
What makes this even more unusual is that I had an answer. Something I'm going to write down here:
At the moment, positive growth. I believe in bettering myself rather than hope other people do the same. I believe in flux: the world continually changes, and so do I. I don't believe in becoming stagnant. If I'm a certain way for a long enough time, I feel an urge to just pick up and change everything. At first, it was just change of any kind. As I have grown and become more mature, I want to changes in my life to lead me in positive directions. When I do change, I want it to be because I am better serving myself and others, not just to please other people in general.
I don't believe in humanity nearly as much as I used to. There was a time when I could trust anything a given person said. That time is, thankfully, long past. But it was also the time I considered the brightest of my life so far. I want to believe as I did, but I've come to accept that I never really will, and that it's not good for me to. But still... I still want to reach a day where I can believe in the goodness of people but not depend on it. There's a lot of pain I need to work through before I get there, but I'm willing to work through it because I was a lot happier when I believed in the inherent goodness of humanity. Being a teacher is actually helping me with that. They say kids are cruel, but they are also incredibly gentle, endearing, and sweet. They're humanity at its barest essence.
I believe in being honest and loyal, but not defining myself as either one. Not anymore. I spent too much time molding myself to fit a certain lifestyle before I realized that lifestyle didn't meet my needs at all. I spent too much time holding myself and only myself to those standards and letting everyone else slide. I've learned that I can be a good person at heart and that it's ok to have flaws. I haven't fully embraced those flaws, but I'm at least much more aware of them now.
If I said these always were, are, and always will be my beliefs, I would be lying through my teeth. I tend to do an overhaul of what I stand for at least one a year. These past few years, it's happened more often. A lot has happened in my life to assess where I'm going. I became an "adult," I got a few jobs, I went to grad school,I got engaged. My life is pulling me in a few directions and, frankly, I'm not sure which way I should go. I can't say that I will keep these beliefs as I travel. But I will remember to analyze them and see which ones can help me and which ones hurt.
As far as I am concerned, these are my beliefs, for now. As I've said, I'm a creature of change. Which, ironically enough, is the only true constant about me.
RG
Monday, March 7, 2011
Half a Year of Rebooting (or Reflections on a Facebook Meme)
The project I started in September is surprisingly very much alive now. This is a pretty big deal for me because a pattern I have repeated often in my life has been to start something new only to forget about it shortly after. Perhaps that aspect of me is being rewritten and recoded a bit faster than most other things in this process. I like that.
Rebooting has opened my eyes to a lot of things this year. It has opened my eyes to positive self-criticism instead of self-deprecation. I've learned a lot about myself this year. That I can be grateful without being a fool. That I can be distant without being cold. That it is a very good thing to examine myself from time to time so I don't grow stagnant.
My fiance (still not used to that word, btw) mentioned something funny to me yesterday. On a 30-day-challenge Facebook meme I've been following, I posted an old picture of myself to represent who I was. My fiance did not recognize me at first. He asked me who that girl in my photo was and did not believe that it was me. it took a bit of time and analysis, but he did recognize me as I was then. He felt silly for not realizing it was me. I told him that was perfectly ok.
I explained to him that I'm the kind of girl who recreates herself from time to time. To the point where looking at photos of me from even as recently as college and looking at me now gives a viewer two completely different people. The girl in the photo was in a sunny lawn enjoying the spring day. She has a mixed look of calm and nervousness in her eyes (she hates being in pictures). Her flip-flopped feet are up in the air as she lied on her belly. She smiles with closed lips because she is embarrassed of her crooked teeth. The girl my fiance knows now is VERY different from that girl, even if these two entities share the same consciousness and body.
The girl my fiance knows now, the one he is marrying, isn't truly a girl. She is a woman. Unlike the girl in the picture, this woman hides from pictures to the point where it is very rare to see what she looks like. She might like being photographed again one day. When this woman smiles, she smiles widely with her now-straightened teeth and with her head held high. her hair is no longer long but bobbed, and cute that way. She stands up instead of lies down, she works instead of lounges. She is who I am now, but not necessarily who I will always be.
I suppose it is impossible to slack off in rebooting. I've been doing it all my life. This is just the first time I've ever written about it.
RG
Rebooting has opened my eyes to a lot of things this year. It has opened my eyes to positive self-criticism instead of self-deprecation. I've learned a lot about myself this year. That I can be grateful without being a fool. That I can be distant without being cold. That it is a very good thing to examine myself from time to time so I don't grow stagnant.
My fiance (still not used to that word, btw) mentioned something funny to me yesterday. On a 30-day-challenge Facebook meme I've been following, I posted an old picture of myself to represent who I was. My fiance did not recognize me at first. He asked me who that girl in my photo was and did not believe that it was me. it took a bit of time and analysis, but he did recognize me as I was then. He felt silly for not realizing it was me. I told him that was perfectly ok.
I explained to him that I'm the kind of girl who recreates herself from time to time. To the point where looking at photos of me from even as recently as college and looking at me now gives a viewer two completely different people. The girl in the photo was in a sunny lawn enjoying the spring day. She has a mixed look of calm and nervousness in her eyes (she hates being in pictures). Her flip-flopped feet are up in the air as she lied on her belly. She smiles with closed lips because she is embarrassed of her crooked teeth. The girl my fiance knows now is VERY different from that girl, even if these two entities share the same consciousness and body.
The girl my fiance knows now, the one he is marrying, isn't truly a girl. She is a woman. Unlike the girl in the picture, this woman hides from pictures to the point where it is very rare to see what she looks like. She might like being photographed again one day. When this woman smiles, she smiles widely with her now-straightened teeth and with her head held high. her hair is no longer long but bobbed, and cute that way. She stands up instead of lies down, she works instead of lounges. She is who I am now, but not necessarily who I will always be.
I suppose it is impossible to slack off in rebooting. I've been doing it all my life. This is just the first time I've ever written about it.
RG
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
An Open Letter to Miss Goody Goody
Miss Goody Goody is the name I gave to a part of me I decided to leave behind when I started rebooting. Miss Goody Goody is the side of my character that was always worried about everyone else and never herself. She was the one who told me it was ok to feel sad if it meant everyone else was happy. She was the one who told me not to stir up trouble (and by trouble, I mean sticking up for myself). She was the one who told me that "good girls just smile and nod and get mad when no one is looking."
Miss Goody Goody is someone I miss, in spite of the bad things she did to me. People liked Miss Goody Goody. People felt comfortable with Miss Goody Goody because she let them do whatever they wanted and Miss Goody Goody always nodded and said "ok". When she disappeared, I noticed many of these people disappeared as well. I became this person who said "no" and "I have an opinion" and "What about how I feel?" Turns out, the same people who liked Miss Goody Goody the most didn't like me. They didn't like that they suddenly had to (gasp) pay attention to a friendship with me rather than just take and take and take and give nothing back. They didn't like that the free ride was over. So they left.
And for the longest time, I was sad. Sad that people I liked and trusted couldn't be bothered to get to know the real me. Sad that when given the choice of a real person or Miss Goody Goody, people went for Miss Goody Goody because she was "easier." And then I realized something: how much should I really miss these people? If they were only friendly to me because I did things for them and served certain purposes, there is really no reason for me to miss them. Granted, not everybody I ever met liked Miss Goody Goody. I had plenty of friends, real friends, that saw who I really was beneath Miss Goody Goody. These are the friends I have closest to me now, maybe not in location, but definitely in heart. These are the folks I can count on and who can always count on me.
And so we get to the part of the letter:
Dear Miss Goody Goody,
I miss how you were able to attract people. I miss how you were able to be cute and bubbly and charming and get people to like you. I miss how much easier it was to make friends with people when you were a part of me.
I don't miss you. I don't miss how you thought it was ok for me to constantly "take one for the team." I don't miss how you exposed the fakes for who they really were, but I am grateful that you did. I don't miss always having to say "I'm sorry" for things I didn't do wrong. I don't miss having to put up with things that were ultimately stupid and pointless. I don't miss having to maintain a facade while everyone else can be genuinely happy with you. I don't miss how you twisted things in my mind to make me look like the bad guy for wanting to be respected and truly loved for who I am, not for what I could do.
Things are tougher without you. Making new friends will never be the same. Keeping good friends will actually be easier. Whoever disappeared with you was not worthy of me. Whoever stayed is. And to be honest, I am happy with the people I have in my life now. Near or far, highly connected or not. And most of all, I am ultimately happy that you are gone and I can be who I want to be, not what people want me to be.
- RG
Miss Goody Goody is someone I miss, in spite of the bad things she did to me. People liked Miss Goody Goody. People felt comfortable with Miss Goody Goody because she let them do whatever they wanted and Miss Goody Goody always nodded and said "ok". When she disappeared, I noticed many of these people disappeared as well. I became this person who said "no" and "I have an opinion" and "What about how I feel?" Turns out, the same people who liked Miss Goody Goody the most didn't like me. They didn't like that they suddenly had to (gasp) pay attention to a friendship with me rather than just take and take and take and give nothing back. They didn't like that the free ride was over. So they left.
And for the longest time, I was sad. Sad that people I liked and trusted couldn't be bothered to get to know the real me. Sad that when given the choice of a real person or Miss Goody Goody, people went for Miss Goody Goody because she was "easier." And then I realized something: how much should I really miss these people? If they were only friendly to me because I did things for them and served certain purposes, there is really no reason for me to miss them. Granted, not everybody I ever met liked Miss Goody Goody. I had plenty of friends, real friends, that saw who I really was beneath Miss Goody Goody. These are the friends I have closest to me now, maybe not in location, but definitely in heart. These are the folks I can count on and who can always count on me.
And so we get to the part of the letter:
Dear Miss Goody Goody,
I miss how you were able to attract people. I miss how you were able to be cute and bubbly and charming and get people to like you. I miss how much easier it was to make friends with people when you were a part of me.
I don't miss you. I don't miss how you thought it was ok for me to constantly "take one for the team." I don't miss how you exposed the fakes for who they really were, but I am grateful that you did. I don't miss always having to say "I'm sorry" for things I didn't do wrong. I don't miss having to put up with things that were ultimately stupid and pointless. I don't miss having to maintain a facade while everyone else can be genuinely happy with you. I don't miss how you twisted things in my mind to make me look like the bad guy for wanting to be respected and truly loved for who I am, not for what I could do.
Things are tougher without you. Making new friends will never be the same. Keeping good friends will actually be easier. Whoever disappeared with you was not worthy of me. Whoever stayed is. And to be honest, I am happy with the people I have in my life now. Near or far, highly connected or not. And most of all, I am ultimately happy that you are gone and I can be who I want to be, not what people want me to be.
- RG
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