De-personalization to the MAX!! Radical!

In this blog I seem to vacillate between wanting to keep shit positive and then absolutely letting myself be overcome by negative. I think this is because the only solace I've ever had in my whole life is to go to my room and sit and feel sorry for myself and cry. My entire childhood was me doing this. My early adulthood was me doing this. My actual adulthood is me doing this.

I understand this behavior hinders rather than helps, I dig it. But if this is my mentality since very early childhood clearly its something innate. Why are some people innate catastrophic thinkers or innate sad sack Charlie Browns?

I understand, from some time in therapy, that my biggest issue socially (and also emotionally) is taking things personally. I realize its really a very main core of my mental state. In this world some people are much more sensitive than others. They are deep, and very raw to the touch because they are so open, they have no shell. Disappointments can, at the drop of a dime, devastate these sensitive individuals. They need to be handled with care. Unfortunately a majority of people in this world are too wrapped up in their own shit to really be conscious of the feelings of other people and it sucks because everyone does it, either intentionally or unintentionally. So I am a sensitive person on the road to developing this protective shell.

I am working very hard on not taking things personally, which is an incredibly difficult task at hand especially since I take everything personally. The situation exists very seriously to me because, guess what, people can very very rude, un-thoughtful and sometimes really mean (whether its intentional, or unintentional. it is occurring). In my opinion its people who don't comprehend consideration in this way are that are the worst offenders of rude behavior. A person is being rude to you and making you feel less than in a specific, or overall way, and this offends you (as it would offend anyone). To confront this would be to say something like "Hey, I'm feeling very bad about what you are saying and it is making me feel upset". A considerate person would... check their shit and their internal thought process would go something like "Alright, my friend is upset. I don't know what I did but something I said without realizing it, may have been offensive." and either discuss it rationally from there, acknowledge their own behavior, or consider the other persons feelings and move forward, or politely give them space. "I didn't realize what I said would offend you, I see you are upset and I will try to be more mindful in the future,"

This is called rational thinking/communicating.

But when a person voices themselves in light of another individual's offensive behavior and the response is "Shut up, you're WRONG! Why are you always trying to fight me?" I guess that's the red light that you are dealing with someone who is incapable of consideration in this way and that is the moment when you stop becoming offended, stop confronting this behavior and becoming even more insulted and offended, and simply stop confusing things and realize that another person's rude behavior is not your problem. But that's the clincher isn't it? Depersonalizing those moments is incredibly hard to do.

I had two of these experiences earlier in the week and I successfully depersonalized both of them. Yay!

The first took place in the car with my mother. I mentioned how my step-brother Anthony can handle living with me because of all the years he lived with her. I jokingly state "He's been trained" as my mother and I can be incredibly similar. She starts babbling about it and says "Heh yeah! Little did he know how it would be with you, because you're so much worse than me." She said this in a serious way and I was in such complete shock that someone would nonchalantly say something so rude. I let her know I'm appalled at the aspect of her saying that and she begins to justify her statement by mentioning how crazy I am because of my being bi-polar, this coming from a hoarder with a litany of psychological disorders. This is an instance that would normally amount to me being incredibly offended and defensive and hurt to which she would respond with "Why are you always trying to start a fight?" But I didn't let it happen this time instead stating to her "I don't appreciate your rude statement, please refrain from saying something so uncalled for to me in the future, thank you" and I left it. She rambled a little bit more, I stayed silent until the moment passed and then we carried on like normal. I was really proud of myself.


The second instance came later that night when I had dinner at Jason and Kelly's. Jason was RIPE and insulted me so many times its insane. I'm really nice to him all the time. Sometimes I may come off a little preachy or cocky but its never with bad intentions, We are going through Netflix queues, I use baby Caroline's Netflix username when I surf to not mess up their queues, and Kelly says "lets see whats in your queue". Jason makes a snide comment scoffingly stating "HUH, yeah lets see this"... very derogatory. We go through the queue and every so often he picks his head up from his phone and insults one of my movie choices. I tell Kelly about this movie I just saw about a school shooter and stated the main actor looks a little bit like David Johanson from The New York Dolls. To this he loudly proclaims "HE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DAVID JOHANSON!!". Quite literally, there was only one visible picture of this actor and he was covered in makeup so I state "Maybe not in that picture but I think he resembles him" his response was "YOU ARE WRONG!!! HE DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE HIM!! I MET DAVID JOHANSON AND HE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT". I'm using caps because... he is really emphasizing this meanly and loudly when all I did was say one of the characters reminded me of another person. I end it by saying "Well that's you're opinion".

This story isn't even close to ending. Can you imagine I go to this house to visit my mother and sister and beloved nieces and I get this never ending barrage? They have fleas. Jason picks scabs. He is sitting there picking scabs and wiping the blood with a paper towel so there is this incredibly bloody paper town he just leaves sitting right on the coffee table (yes where his children eat). At first I was taken aback but then, realizing what it was, I was jokingly stated "hey is this your bloody scab rag on the table or is your Aunt Flow visiting from Red Bank?" and his automatic response was 'oh yeah? Well anythings better than me having to clean our your disgusting fucking puss filled knee infection, it was so fucking disgusting and awful." A few years back I had knee surgery and I had go back into surgery a second time. After that second surgery my leg developed an infection because of the very large and painful incisions they made into my leg. I was in the hospital for this infection for over a month and a half on antibiotics that made me sick to my stomach. He helped me during that time, gladly, because I was so sick and in so much pain and there was no way I could reach those wounds to maintain their cleanliness. What a god awfully terrible thing to say to a person that you were helping. My response was "I'm sorry I was hit by a car and terribly ill Jay, I'll try not to do it again!" and he scoffed at me.

So the evening is still continuing and we are still perusing Netflix. We come upon a Tom Cruise movie and Kelly states matter-of-factly that she doesn't like Tom Cruise as an actor and dislikes his movies, she was stating her opinion very politely. Jason says "Tom Cruise is great" and I add that I too enjoy his movies. I began to tell Kelly about this paper I wrote for shits and giggles which surmises that all of Tom Cruises movie choices mimic and seem to have subdued Scientology similarities. It was this crazy paper I wrote after watching all his movies very closely, and the subtext is actually very telling. So I say this to Kelly and she genuinely thought it was cool and asked to read the paper when Jason chimes in "That's fucking stupid. His movies are not about Scientology." I say "Well you haven't read the paper, the subtext is really interesting" and he replies "You are wrong! It's not about Scientology, that's stupid. Tom Cruise is great!". At this point I'm just like aghast, I did nothing to him except be near him and he's targeting in on me and there is literally no reason in the world why he should. I look at Kelly and shes crying. She is crying out of complete and utter embarrassment at his despicable behavior. I tell her like "You don't have to cry, this is just how he is with me. He is like this to me all the time and I'm working very hard and growing a second skin" In tears she just says "Kirsten, he's like this with everyone. It's not just you, it's everyone" and we discuss why he changed and why he is so disgruntled when he has a beautiful wife, two amazing daughters, a job, both of his parents are alive, he has enough side money to collect rare Star Wars figures. For the life of us, we don't understand why he's so incredibly angry.

But that's him, and that's not me.

My last post was filled with a lot of anger at people who do, say, and act rudely or ignorantly. In my heart of hearts I just don't think its fair that people can walk around being inconsiderate and rude and we are supposed to just turn the other cheek and pretend like they do nothing wrong. To me that really justifies the acceptance of that behavior, and it's behavior I don't feel is right. To ignore it and move forward is like saying to the person "you can be rude, its fine, just stay the way you are. You can go ahead and do and say whatever you wish with no consequence, that's acceptable" and YES it makes me angry because it's unacceptable, at least to me.

So here I am at that crossroads. So if a behavior is unacceptable to me I need to rid my life of it. If that is a familial impossibility then I need to just keep reminding myself that another person's rude behavior is not my problem. Its stressful and fucked up and guess what, it has nothing to do with me, and good because I want nothing to do with it.

I just have to keep telling myself this.