Friday 19 June 2015

You make me feel like a...

See, I know I'm bitchy and wretched when the hormones rage. I've known these facts for a painfully and depressingly long time. I do not require reminding whenever someone with "issues" decides to blame me for how they feel when they're having another tiresome tantrum.

No person can make anyone else feel anything emotionally. If you blame someone for how you feel, you give them control of your emotions, of your life, and it means that you don't take responsibility for (or "ownership" of) your own anger or jealousy or feelings of inadequacy or, more wonderfully, your happiness.

No-one made me sad about something; I decided (although, obviously, it's more complicated than "wanting") to feel that way, probably because I care.
No-one made you feel less than good; you didn't believe you were.

It took me decades to realise that, by changing how I think, I know and believe I can and do care less about things that really are not important - or important enough - to me: I AM ALLOWED to not waste my time and effort and golden, priceless energy on worrying about people who don't deserve my precious time; I CAN not concern myself with opinions of people whose only apparent enjoyment is berating so viciously people they don't like; I CAN not pretend to be interested in something which bores me and not worry about protecting everyone from bad things.

We CAN feel those things and not feel guilty. No-one will make me feel guilty for being ill, for being depressed, for not having a job, for being me. I do not let them.

It's been a liberating and difficult process. *shudders at "process"* I didn't know I was capable of not feeling guilt for not doing more at home. I didn't realise until far too late that other people can not make me feel anything, emotionally. Anything. My mind is mine.

Being strong-willed and determined and confident in oneself is not a universally easy way to be. I wouldn't claim to always believe in myself. Health, both physical and mental, are constantly influencing me, in every way, whether I'm aware of it or not. But I will always know that, however and whatever I feel, it is not because someone else has controlled my emotions.

Your mind and your heart and your soul are all yours, and no-one can ever make you be or feel anything. You are, in all probability, magnificent and wondrous and capable of stupendous things.

And my exceptionally-difficult-to-cope-with hormone imbalances still don't mean that other people aren't sometimes whinging, selfish, arrogant little fuckbollocks. It's not actually always me with a problem, or mood, or proverbial bee in my proverbial bonnet.

I am not your emotions, and you are not mine. And that takes us back to the women's magazines of cruel criticising, and blatant bullying, and you'll-never-be-good-enough-you-stupid-big-fat-failure "journalism".

More often than I wish I knew, I've seen people let themselves believe that their emotions are dictated by others. And I've seen both kinds of people become passive-aggressive dickheads.

YOU MAKE ME SO ANGRY.
YOU MAKE ME SO UPSET.
YOU MAKE FEEL STUPID.

Really? Are you sure about that?

1 comment:

Talk to me. Caaam aaahhhnn...