I used to want to avoid anger. Now I think I actually enjoy it.
At any rate, it makes me feel a lot less helpless... and it tells me I'm still alive. Which isn't often. Anger is a far better alternative than say, depression. ("False grief", I read, aka depression, is actually a smokescreen for anger especially for women, who aren't encouraged to show their anger in public.) I'll take the anger, anytime.
A friend told me this morning that two other classmates had been gossiping about me... people that I'd confided in cos' I thought they were friendly and, well, harmless. Apparently not. They know about an eighth of what happened to me and now they're assuming I cried the entire day for that reason. Excuse me? So now they're saying I'm pathetic, but bloody shit, they haven't even begun to scrape the surface of what I was upset about. My friend warned me not to be too trusting, about some things.
It got me wondering.
I've spent years and years of my life, really, in what can be termed no more than a sweet-little-girl act. Which basically consists of shutting up good, saying "yes" to everything, sitting down, behaving, and being ingratiatingly polite. So I thought I'd turn into a sweet-little-lady, like my mom, then a sweet-little-old-lady; always nice, always negligible, always in the background - cos' by God, at least that's somewhere safe. You don't get into the line of fire by camouflaging yourself. That's what I always thought.
It's not been working very well.
(Understatement.)
After some time I've started to see that NO MATTER WHAT I DO... there will always be something about me that rubs people the wrong way, something that they can tease me about, something I will never be able to get right no matter how hard I try. There will always be people who, unimpressed with the way I stay out of everyone else's line of vision, condemn me privately behind my back. I honestly, honestly thought that people would treat me the way I treated them. I never bitch behind anyone's back, because I don't like the way it feels. Yet that doesn't stop anyone from doing it to me.
So I've done all that to restrict and contain myself, I've tried to blend in and fit in... to what avail? At what price?
... There are going to have to be some big changes around here.
At any rate, it makes me feel a lot less helpless... and it tells me I'm still alive. Which isn't often. Anger is a far better alternative than say, depression. ("False grief", I read, aka depression, is actually a smokescreen for anger especially for women, who aren't encouraged to show their anger in public.) I'll take the anger, anytime.
A friend told me this morning that two other classmates had been gossiping about me... people that I'd confided in cos' I thought they were friendly and, well, harmless. Apparently not. They know about an eighth of what happened to me and now they're assuming I cried the entire day for that reason. Excuse me? So now they're saying I'm pathetic, but bloody shit, they haven't even begun to scrape the surface of what I was upset about. My friend warned me not to be too trusting, about some things.
It got me wondering.
I've spent years and years of my life, really, in what can be termed no more than a sweet-little-girl act. Which basically consists of shutting up good, saying "yes" to everything, sitting down, behaving, and being ingratiatingly polite. So I thought I'd turn into a sweet-little-lady, like my mom, then a sweet-little-old-lady; always nice, always negligible, always in the background - cos' by God, at least that's somewhere safe. You don't get into the line of fire by camouflaging yourself. That's what I always thought.
It's not been working very well.
(Understatement.)
After some time I've started to see that NO MATTER WHAT I DO... there will always be something about me that rubs people the wrong way, something that they can tease me about, something I will never be able to get right no matter how hard I try. There will always be people who, unimpressed with the way I stay out of everyone else's line of vision, condemn me privately behind my back. I honestly, honestly thought that people would treat me the way I treated them. I never bitch behind anyone's back, because I don't like the way it feels. Yet that doesn't stop anyone from doing it to me.
So I've done all that to restrict and contain myself, I've tried to blend in and fit in... to what avail? At what price?
... There are going to have to be some big changes around here.
posted by Ling at
11:48 PM
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