Month: February 2004

With­in the last week I have been in con­ver­sa­tion with three dif­fer­ent peo­ple, at dif­fer­ent times, on the same top­ic. I say things that hurt the feel­ings of my friends and fam­i­ly and, appar­ent­ly, I do it pret­ty often. There was no hes­i­ta­tion on the part of two of these peo­ple in say­ing so, once I brought it up. I have known that I put my foot in my mouth and say the wrong thing on a reg­u­lar basis for years, but I did­n’t real­ize I hurt so many peo­ple that I care about. I don’t want to hurt any­one’s feel­ings, so I don’t know why I get so mouthy. Maybe I do want to hurt peo­ple and just hide it from myself. It seems like I come at life from a neg­a­tive point of view, always dis­sat­is­fied. I need to under­stand why I am like this. Does my dis­sat­is­fac­tion arise as the result of being taught to accept only the high­est qual­i­ty of work and behav­ior from myself? Did I pick up my ease at ver­bal abuse from being yelled at by my father? How can I exist in both of these par­a­digms simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and with­out appar­ent com­pli­ca­tion? More impor­tant­ly, how is it that I have friends who put up with my shit? They are some damn good peo­ple. I was look­ing through my first posts from two years ago and it does­n’t look like I have changed very much. I thought I had gone through some per­son­al growth, but fun­da­men­tal­ly I remain a grouchy, hurt­ful per­son. Even this post is indica­tive of my prob­lem. I need to fig­ure out how to change, how to make my hap­py, gen­tle and easy­go­ing side my basis instead of what I strug­gle for. First off I am going to have to stop teas­ing peo­ple and only be frank when peo­ple ask me my opin­ion. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. I’ll add that to my list of things to work on.