This is more of a mental bit than a body bit, but it’s my blog so nyer.
I’ve found myself falling back into a mindset of “don’t want to be all interferey”. Don’t want to impose, don’t want to push where i may not be wanted, don’t want to stick my nose in where it might get something stuck up it. Don’t want to overstep boundaries.
What this looks like, how it plays out, is that i rarely speak up, rarely comment on other people’s blogs, journals or facebook entries. Don’t talk much in online chat rooms. I see people i know on facebook and hesitate to add them. I have become a lurker. It means i don’t participate in what’s going on around me, and it’s especially dumb because i put myself in those places and then get a bug up my arse because a community hasn’t magically sprung up around me (or if it has, i’ve effectively put myself on the sidelines of it).
Part of the problem might be that i’m imagining stricter boundaries than are actually there. I assume that people think, not necessarily the worst… but not necessarily the best, either. Somewhere in between.
Part of that honestly boils down to self-esteem issues. It occurred to me as i was lying in bed this morning that it may be as “simple” as a fear of rejection. A fear of being told off. A fear of not knowing how people might respond to what i would say. A fear of misinterpretation, misunderstanding and/or miscommunication, perhaps.
The end result of all of this is that i become more withdrawn, more isolated. That isolation negatively reinforces the idea that i should just keep to myself. Decidedly not too brilliant of me.
The other night, i startled Ben by stomping on the ground and saying “BASTARD! HA! GOT YOU!” I triumphantly flexed my muscles (complete with “hrrr” noises) and then realized Ben was looking at me funny. He hadn’t seen that i’d stomped a cave cricket, so i explained to him what had just occurred. He was talking to some friends online, and said, “the girl who’s not afraid of anything, yet is terrified of cave crickets, just killed one.”
A brief tangent, just to clear something up here: my feelings about cave crickets are not entirely rational. I don’t like things flying up in my face. I don’t like things coming too close to my face. I don’t like my dogs licking my face. My personal bubble is relatively small around my body, and disproportionately large around my head. Cave crickets are, as Ben once described them, the self-feeding popcorn of the insect world. Their primary reaction to a threat is to bodily fling themselves up at its face. This is decidedly Not Cool in my book. I can walk face-first into a spider web and be kind of eugh for a moment, but if a cave cricket jumps up at me, it’s run around and scream like a nelly bitch time. And then i’ll probably need a long, exfoliating shower to adequately rid myself of the skin crawlies.
The idea that i’m seen as fearless grabbed a cup of coffee and found a seat in my brainmeats. I’ve been told that this is the aura or attitude that i tend to project; like many other opinions other people have about me, it baffles me. I’m so far from fearless. I’m afraid of so damn many things, i feel limited by my fears.
I’m afraid of rejection (and it’s cousin, abandonment). I’m afraid of being disliked. I’m afraid of conflict. I’m afraid of making bad decisions. I’m afraid of running out of time. I’m afraid of a whole lot of things. I’m afraid of Changes; to clarify that: i am not afraid of the results of changes, but of the process of changing (insect metaphor time: i’m more afraid of the what’s going on inside the cocoon than i am of the butterfly).
With a lot of my fears, i tend to face them fairly head on. Stare ‘em in the face and get it over with. If there’s gonna be conflict, let’s get it out and over with sooner rather than later. If there’s gonna be change, let the change begin so we can be done with it ASAP. If you dislike me, don’t make any false pretenses – just tell me so we can both move on. So it’s not that i’m fearless. I think it’s more that i’m not afraid of facing the fears that i do indeed have.
Ahh, and it occurs to me that part of that might stem from a desire to have some control over the situations causing (or coming from) the things i fear.
But i want to go back to this fear of interfering, because that’s what kicked this off, and i need to look more at that. Well, not just look at it, because looking only does so much. I do enough looking, and don’t do enough doing. What i need to figure out is how to get the hell over it.
Some of this goes back to the idea of “other people’s opinion of me is none of my damn business” thing. Most people are not going to just come out at tell me what they think of me, especially if it’s something negative (i imagine that if/when that sort of opinion is going to be voiced, i’m not likely to be around to hear it). So not only is this sort of thing just not likely to happen, i need to stop acting like i’m two seconds of opening my mouth away from it happening.
Like most of other fears, i think this one comes down to just facing it and pushing through it. Start commenting, start interacting. Just bloody well DO it. And if bad stuff happens, then it happens and i’ll deal with it and it won’t be the end of the world. One or two unpleasant situations aren’t worth sacrificing all of the potentially awesome interactions and experiences of which i’ve been depriving myself.
Like getting into a swimming pool, there are two approaches to this: the slow easing in (complete with eep and aaah noises), and the Cannonball Depth Charge. While the latter conjures amusing Calvin & Hobbes memories, i don’t think it’s the way to go. It’s not sustainable, long term. It’s harder to ease into it, because as i’ve already mentioned, i’m a rip-the-bandaid-off kinda girl. But i think easing into it is the better idea, because i’m not just easing myself into it; since this is primarily about my interactions with other people, i need to keep in mind that while i’ve made up my mind to be more interacty with the people around me, they haven’t been privvy to that internal process.
I think i’m about done for now. I’m tempted to post this to my facebook & livejournal, just as a heads up kinda thing, but i recognize there’s also some desire to give explanation for my lack of interaction. I want to let people know that no, i haven’t been avoiding them in particular, i’ve just managed to avoid myself into a corner.
And on that note, i’m going to try to get some sleep. Yay for wonky sleep schedules!