Saturday, April 9, 2011

Editing my life


After a good friend opened my eyes up earlier this week with a heartfelt email it has made me think a lot about different things. The email was about how this friend has dealt with their own passive-aggressive behaviour over the years and they wanted to share their ways of coping with me. They wanted to help me by sharing their very personal and moving journey in order to help me on my journey in learning to deal with things differently.

What I do know is that learned behaviour that I have employed over many years to protect myself will be hard to “undo”. I am sure that from time to time I will resort to my old learned behaviour. Nevertheless, it is about trying to put new behaviours into my life and deal with my emotions and situations in a better way. I want to be more in control of my actions and words. I have written about passive-aggressive behaviour before so I am not going to talk about it here.

One thing that really stood out in the email was that my friend mentioned that they were afraid of people disliking them. I feel exactly the same. I hate the thought of upsetting people and having them hate me. However, at the end of the day not everyone is going to like me and I am not going to like everyone. People are all different and some gravitate towards others and some do not. A bit like magnets really.

In the past year some of my friendships have ended and I am the first person to admit that there were issues on both sides. I am not perfect, and totally understand my own faults (most of the time). I did not want to upset or hurt people and so I started editing my online life. This is something that I NEVER EVER wanted to do. My online life has always been a place where I have felt more “free” to be Ness. So rather than being honest about things I was doing, or places I had gone, or people I had seen I would keep it quiet. I did not want people to think that I was not spending time with them and then end up upsetting people.

We are all busy; yes some more than others. Yes, there are people that I spend a great deal of time with and others I only see once or twice a year. Last year one of my oldest school friends and I made a pact to catch up more regularly and we saw each other more last year than we probably have in the past 5 years. The key to catching up with people more regularly (in my opinion) is scheduling your next catch up each time you see each other. Sometimes I just get into a routine and am slack with catching up with people that I love and care about. Nevertheless, please remember that most people also fall into similar routines and catch up with other friends, and go to places they enjoy.

I simply cannot do this anymore. I do not want to “edit” my life because of the fear of someone feeling hurt or left out of my life. I do my utmost not to do things that would hurt or upset people, but I do realise that I have done it in the past through my own stupidity or passive-aggressive actions. However, I have been hurt and upset by people as well.

Last year was one of nastiest years I have had for a while. When things really fell apart there were friends that helped me through it and those that either did not give a shit, or that I just hid things from. At the end of the day a good friend is someone that you can trust completely. A good friend is someone that you cannot see for a year and when you do things have not changed between you both.

The only promise I can make is that will try and catch up more regularly with the people I care about.

9 comments:

  1. Awesome! I try really hard to do this too, but life gets in the way. I think you just need to set goals for a week/month or whatever and do your best to stick to them. :D

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  2. Life does get in the way. I think we get caught up in the "right now" and before we know it the year has gone. I am quite routine based so if I know a catch up is planned then it's all good. But then on the flipside I can be really flexible and make lunch dates on the day. You LMS make me think about a lot of things....often. :)

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  3. One of the greatest freedoms I ever learned was the ability to just not care about what people thought of me. Yes, I can still care - and often do - but I learned to put it into perspective.

    That said, I do edit my online life to a large degree. For me, it's not about hiding things, it's about retaining a level of control about how much of myself I put out there.

    It's all about how comfortable YOU are. The key is to stop worrying about the comfort of those who don't matter to you. I'm not saying to be rude, but break free of the artificial shackles you put on yourself. It's not easy, but I can promise you it is completely worth it.

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  4. Life is a rollercoaster. There are ups and downs, good and bad times. Sometimes friends are for life, sometimes just for a time. What I do know is that none of us are perfect, but what matters is that we be the best people we can. And treasure those friends and family who love us and stick by us, because they are more precious than gold.

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  5. Thanks Kat for your thoughts and suggestions. I really want to move to a place where I can put people's thoughts of me into perspective. Not there yet. I do control a bit of how much of myself I put online. Most of it is around my job etc.

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  6. Awwwww Bronnie thank you. I realised quite a few years ago that friends come and go. Some are there fleetingly and others are there forever. I trust really easily and have been hurt because of that. Mostly I am about 95% right...but every so often I'm not. that's life I guess.

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  7. I for one am glad you can make lunchdates on the day :)
    (you didn't mention the Waka well done you haha)

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  8. (I thought I had responded to this post weeks ago.)

    We sound very alike, not only in how we blog but in our approaches to life (and ourselves). It's one of the reasons why my blog is anonymous and ultimately 'closed'; I choose the persona I want to portray and Café Chick blogs and tweets it for me. That's not to say she/I always get it right. Also, it still doesn't solve the problem of how I see myself and perceive what others think about me.

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  9. @Cafe Chick thanks for your comment. Sometimes I think about having an anonymous blog and then I think "nah, I can cope". I kind of wish I could lock certain blog posts, but then perhaps I could write them to get the words out and then burn them. :)

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