winkgirl4's Diaryland
Diary
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Getting Smart
Getting Smart...Would you believe... that the days are long but the nights are longer and, god, are they ever lonely? What can I say? Do I deserve this? No, not really. Will I endure it? Yeah. Probably. I'm trying some new things, lately. The first is to teach myself to be more selfish. I'm going to start by buying myself a new car. (A car I probably can't afford but that I can't afford NOT to have, either.) Learning to be more selfish isn't as easy as you'd think, though. Don't get me wrong, I'm by no means Mother Teresa but I am, without a doubt, a professional enabler. I deny myself a lot of things out of guilt of not giving other people enough. Clearly, it's my most pathetic quality. It takes a bit to admit that but, here I am, admitting it. I used to give myself cute little names like "Pleaser" or "Nurturer" or defend my over-indulgent behavior as 'being accepting of people's faults- you know, loving the sinner despite the sin. But it's all just a nice cover. It's all just a sweet way of saying that I enabled people to take advantage of me. About a week or so ago I was bombarded by complaints and looks of disgust from SO many people in my life who wanted to lecture me on my indulgence of other people. Tones of contempt and frustration colored comments like, "God, Heather, you've just got to start saying 'no'," and "You know, you really just let people walk all over you- why do you do that? Tell them 'no'." Almost everyone of them being someone that I've over-indulged in the past. Because it's not that they really didn't want me to give in to people- it's that they didn't want me to give in to anyone but them. They didn't like knowing that the more I gave to someone else was less what they could take from me. It was a laughter on the verge of tears kind of experience. The hardest part for me is that while I'm indulging in a person, I actually enjoy it as much as they do. I'm sure it's all for unhealthy reasons that I just don't see, yet, but I like the feeling of helping people or making them feel better about themselves. It was one of my favorite qualities about myself. -Until. Until it get's to that point- and it always gets to that point- where people are telling me how I'm failing them by not being able to give them every single thing that they want and feel that they need. When it gets to that point when people tell me how much I'm letting them down. And I'm just enough of a sucker to let the guilt of it eat at me and I sit back, clutching my heart. Honestly, I can't much more of this giving and failing, hoping and being disappointed. It's making me more cynical than I already am. It's making me more reluctant to invest. Frankly, it's leaving me with less to give. So, I'm reprogramming myself. From now on, if it's not for me, it's not getting done. But, god, is it ever hard to do because, frankly, I don't really know what I want for myself. I mean, I know that I want someone beside me but, it's all too clear that I suck at that, so that's out. So this isn't going to be easy. Right now, though, I've got the timer set and my heart is scheduled to self- destruct in ten seconds, so I'd stand clear if I were you.
12:54 p.m. - 2003-07-25
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