This delightful, delicious, de-lovely month of March for the year 2002 begins at the bottom of the page, so make your way down there for all of the sapid details.
March 5th, 2002: I'm kind of angry at myself right now. Yesterday, I was on the toilet, when I started thinking about the fact that people are always wanting to change other people. And I thought about the times when I've asked people to tell me the things that they hate about me or when people have offered their opinions without my asking. And I thought about all of the mental anxiety that learning of my faults has caused me. Because well, that's what you do when you're on the toilet.
See, when I find out that someone doesn't like something about me, my immediate response is something along the lines of, "Hey, eat me, pal!" You know, I want to be all unaffected by what other people say because I'm pretty satisfied with the way I am. But I am affected. I think about it for weeks. I think about whether the person was saying it just to hurt my feelings or because she's jealous of my wonderfulosity or if there really might be something undesirable about me.
A short time after the "eat me" stage, I go through a period of considering changing myself to suit the person who doesn't like me. I always think things like, "If this person doesn't like that I don't want to birth 50 children or that I argue a lot or that I talk about music too much or that I wear green pants, then maybe everyone hates those things about me. Maybe I should want 50 children. Maybe I should stop picking fights just to weed out the weak non-fighters. Maybe I should stop caring so much about music and clothes."
After flirting with these ideas for a while, I usually go back to the "eat me" thing.
But it hasn't always been this way. And it makes me angry that I used to be a different way. I think that my main problem was that in high school, I faked a lot. I faked wanting to be friends with a lot of people, because I thought that I was required to have a lot of friends, even if most of them meant absolutely nothing to me. So, the ones who did mean something, the intelligent ones who mocked me and mocked themselves and mocked life, meant so much, probably too much, that I think I conformed to who they wanted me to be. Maybe that's why Tracey and I were clones of each other. And maybe that's why I'm going through this crazy period of self-discovery now that the only best friend sort I see regularly is The BIG K.N. And now I wish I could get those little things that I changed to change back.
For instance, I used to use my turn signals in parking lots. It didn't matter if it was 3 AM and the entire lot was completely devoid of other human life; I still wanted to let a passing dog or tumbleweed know that I was about to turn. And then Chicago Mike started making fun of me for that, as he makes fun of me for everything. So, I stopped doing it. I hate that. I changed. I'm sure that that's not even something that he really cared about at all, and yet I still changed it. And that's something that I want someone to fall in love with me for. If there isn't a man out there who loves little quirks like using turn signals in parking lots and being frightened by what could be lurking in dirty dishwater and thinking that learning how to add windshield wiper fluid to my car is the most exciting thing ever, then I hope I never fall in love.
I hate that if I do change, I'm seen as sacrificing myself to keep others happy, but if I say, "Screw you. I like me," I'm seen as being self-centered and unwilling to compromise. It's a double bind, man. A double bind.