I have a side of my personality that I often hide from the world. Messy. Untrusting. Ambivalent. Grieving. Burnt out. Angry. Judgmental. Human. My whole life I thought I needed to be perfect to be loved. And the fucked up part is I thought I had to be perfect to love MYSELF. I tried to hide my flaws, hide my anger, hide my true feelings until they spiraled me into burn out.
If you know me, you know I’m a pleasant person – a Stage 1 People Pleaser. And what I realized is it’s self-centered to always want to please others and not hurt their feelings; it assumes I know what people need/want AND that they actually care/are fueled by my actions and opinions. Some people want the REAL THING, a real relationship where people fight, have a blow out, possibly fuck, and make up again. And maybe they don’t make up again, and that’s OK too. It adds much-needed depth to relationships and weeds out the ones that no longer serve. And in my eyes this is what’s missing from my millennial brothers and sisters’ world: DEPTH.
Let’s go there with each other, even if it gets messy, and if shit gets real just say, “Whaddya gonna do, hit me?!” as my Mom always said to my Dad when they were hammered fist fighting. Today I choose to surrender to my true feelings and breathe through the discomfort of expressing them.