Don't take it so personally (musing #2)

as long as i can remember, i have taken things personally. i mean to be honest, sometimes, i don't see any other way to take it. if you say, 'those are some ugly shoes you have on,' how in the hamsandwich am i supposed to take it, if i don't take it personally? i mean i personally have the "ugly shoes" on my feet so how am i not to take it personally?

you stop talking to me and don't give me a reason... um, yeah i am gonna take it personally unless you have stopped talking to everyone else in the world


you invite everyone in our circle to a function but me, yeah, it's gonna be chalked up as being personal.

you leave messages on all your other friends' walls except mine..yeah as childish as it seems, i am gonna take it personally

you don't answer or return any of my phone calls or messages and i know for a fact that you don't do this to other people...yeah, i am gonna take it personally.


what other way am i to take it? i am not sure. but i do understand the underlying message in this foolishness and i do try to use the techniques often given in self-help books but, um, it's sometimes very hard to make it about some deficiency in the other person. what i have found that works is analyzing my feelings... acknowledging them and giving them full credit/weight for what it's worth, and breaking down why it is that i feel that way, is there something i can do to change the way i feel and trying to see is it really about the other person or about some issue within myself that i haven't resolved, or maybe had no knowledge that needed to be resolved, that has caused me to take it personally...does that make sense?

well, anywho, this method has worked for me and over the last year i have found it easier and easier to actually not take things so personally becuz i have found it easier to just dismiss whatever it is that has been said or work through my issue to the point that whatever it is doesn't even matter any more.

i guess the hard part about this is that it requires you to be honest with yourself and sometimes that puts us in a very uncomfortable place... case in point

the other day i learned that someone i cared about stopped believing in true love way before they met me..well, not met me but before we started dealing and i was hurt, no i was crushed.. my heart literally ached because to me it said: the last time i loved or believed in love was when i was with this person so everyone that came after this person, um, i didn't love.

so, i'm hurt and i message and tell him this: just wanted to let you know you hurt me something terrible... everytime i allow you back in my life things happen to make me question if you even deserved to be there in the first place. now, ofcourse this was written out of hurt, and it actually identified partly why i had taken this newfound knowledge so personally.

did he deserve to be there in the first place? if not, that would somehow signify that i was a poor judge of character and had let yet another dead beat into my special space.

when he said he loved me, did that mean he was lying? so, not only did i make a poor decision in allowing you to be in my life, i was gullible too because i believed that you loved me

so, if you didn't believe in true love since ol girl, did that make me the rebound chick? it's not that i mind being the rebound chick per se...it's just, let me know in advance before you annouce to the public that i was the rebound chick.. so at least when your chickenhead true love shouts me out(um and i only call her a chickenhead cuz that's what she is), i can be on guard so that i can deliver my hostility. (yeah, i couldn't resist)or when my peeps ask me about it, i can know what they are taking about and have a response.

so the basis for my being hurt and taking his message so personally was because i felt that he was letting the whole world know that i was a fool basically because i was deeply in love with this boy and the whole world (ha) knew that.. that i wasn't a good judge of character because i had people believing that this dude loved my dirty drawls and that it was my personal issues that lead to our demise when in actuality it just boiled down to: i wasn't the one he wanted to be with. and i guess my only consolation was that there are guys that i just didn't want to be with and well that's why i am not with them; however, difference is, i told them from jump street that i was just passing the time away... didn't tell them i loved them and if i did, i also told them when i no longer loved them and why we needed to part and i didn't give them any hopes of reoccupying the space that was now vacant.

so did i have a right to take his message personally? no, because he wasn't setting out to attack my character, he was simply stating his feelings about love in general and i took that to mean he didn't love me when in fact it doesn't matter because it will not and cannot change the fact that i loved him so.. i can't say now that well since you didn't believe in love when we were together, i now change my first response to you.. i really didn't love you, hah!! real life doesn't work like that... just me personally speaking