This year...really, this year more than any other leading up to it, has represented the social exercise of maintaining self-awareness with respect to others' feelings while at the same time not caring about what people think of me. It's important to note at this point that I'm saying this with a healthy amount of hindsight, that it's not a proclamation of independence or intent. It's not a discovery or resolution. It's just the result, I guess, of having reached a few limits, and rather than compromise myself to win the favor of others, I've finally thrown my hands up and accepted that, in the moment, I just can't behave the way people want me to, or worse yet, be the person people want me to be. I am so guilty of having tried this in the past - with a theater company, with people at work, with friends, with relationships - and in the end, I've found out that merely disguising the parts doesn't make them fit together any better. It is what it is.
Now, I won't sit here with this pickle in my left hand (it's lunchtime) and tell you that I absolutely don't care what everyone thinks about me. That would just be a flat out lie, and I suspect that anybody who tells you that they're completely apathetic to opinions about them isn't telling you the complete truth. Our reactions are different, but even a two second exchange with a stranger could make or break your day. That guy who honked his horn at you in the parking lot might be immediately forgotten, but later, that unresolved memory might be waiting on your pillow. "Wait...was he honking at me? Yeah, he was. What did I do?" I used to think that adapting to everyone who had a problem with me would solve the whole pillow issue, but it didn't. There's always a reconciliation with the day's deeds, at least in my mind.
What I'm beginning to learn is that people are entitled to their own anger, happiness, and yes, even a sadness you want to take away but sometimes can only be in the company of. The point really is, to be strong, to know yourself, and in my case, to keep asking questions so I can really be here, living in the present and always be ready to change direction and see things differently...
...because I can't, as much as I've tried in the past, make anyone feel anything that somehow fits in the world of my expectations. I only have the capacity to be the person I aspire to be, to constantly learn and pay attention, and hopefully stop wasting my time worrying about things that are out of my control. I've finally surrendered to that, and the get out of jail card I have in my back pocket is that for years, I've explored my life and the world around me mostly alone. I've had only a couple of people in my life who have been right there with me, but for the most part, walking away and doing my own thing has been a briar patch for me. Oh, I know people have complained about me, or even recently in my history, don't quite know how to maintain contact (which could easily make me feel like "tainted goods", but it doesn't), but as a friend once told me, that's not my problem. It's all in the reaction.
If I close my eyes, I can see myself surrounded by nothing familiar, an ocean of indifference and memories in the back of my mind. I've walked away from aging definitions of things I wanted to do and people I wanted to be around, and I wait here in silence. I do have this pickle, though.
Soon, it'll be time to rebuild.
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