Having honest conversations about your life is so wonderful and helpful and gut wrenching all at the same time. I constantly over-analyze everything. It must be so exhausting to be my friend. I can't possibly tell you a truth about myself without conditioning it with all of the completely self aware thoughts surrounding that truth. A friend of mind posted a link to an article of an advice columnist the other day on Facebook. She pointed out a specific paragraph that described herself. Another in that article described me:
"...I have a very deep, intractable need to be understood and appreciated for exactly who I am. This nugget of high expectations exists at the center of my psyche. Now, sure, everyone wants to be understood and appreciated. But exactly how much energy will most people expend in order to be understood and appreciated by people who either don't have the time or don't have any concrete reason to express such things? Personally speaking, I will work tirelessly to be understood. I will explain and re-explain. And at some level, I am absolutely certain that, with enough explaining, I will be understood and embraced—at long last!"
One Christmas morning, I was probably 25 or so, my brother and my roommate presented me with a Christmas present. It was big fluffy pink bunny slippers, with the price tag on. My brother smiled at me so proudly. I immediately started crying and asked if they were kidding. I was so upset. I couldn't believe that he - who had grown up with me forever, and my best friend of years had given me such a stupid present. And it wasn't that it was stupid in and of itself - it was that they thought I would like it. I felt like they didn't know me at all and I felt so betrayed. Then they handed me a little box and said "oh yeah this too". They had bought me an ipod. And it was engraved. It was a present that I didn't even know I wanted and hadn't asked for but immediately felt like it was the one thing I had wanted. I cried even more. I felt bad at having been mad at them for the slippers, and I felt more loved that I knew what to do with.
There are moments when i'm crying, probably looking spoiled. and moments when I seem like i'm arguing just to be argumentative but there is so much truth to the intrinsic need that I feel to be understood. So much so, that if I feel betrayed by someone, I question that I was ever understood or loved by them to begin with.... I was going to write something like "i'm sure that's a totally selfish way of thinking/living" but then realized that'd be speaking to my earlier point that I need to explain that I already understand the stupid aspects of myself. ugh. being me is exhausting.
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