Dodging Bullets

I woke up this morning at 4:00 a.m. I could not get back to sleep. There is something about the early morning darkness of a bedroom that lends itself to thoughts and thinking for which the busyness of daylight has no room. Sometimes the thoughts are as dark as the room.

I have spent most of my life dodging bullets, doing my best to make sure that I do not offend or anger anyone. Most of my life I have been reluctant to ask for the things I needed and to say “no” to those things I did not like. I was content to wait and hope that someone noticed my need or me. I am only sporadically assertive and somewhere in my formative years, I must have absorbed the idea that being assertive is almost an abomination. I have always needed more than I ever asked for and I never dared to look for more than what I received. I suppose, in some passive convoluted way of thinking, I believed I would be rewarded for taking the path of least resistance when it came to my needs and my wants. I was wrong. More people have forgotten me than I care to remember (no pun intended). I have forgotten about more people than I care to remember, names that come to me in moments of vague recollections.

I guess our brains are so chock full of our to-do lists that caring about someone else is relegated to the nether-regions of our hearts in spite of our good intentions. When the word comes to us that an individual has died, we wonder why we did not call or try to connect with them when that vague recollection flitted across our minds. I have wondered this very thing more often than I would like to admit.

I suppose some people can just walk away from us without a backward glance. The frightening thing about this act is not that people can walk away from us with impunity, but that it does not even occur to them that they might have broken a heart. When they run into you on the street, they act as though they never lost your place. They do not think about silent tears or rancid loneliness or vacant need. They may not even want to see any trace of pain during those random chance encounters as they run up to you swathed in broad smiles to express their delight at seeing you once again. A few years ago someone asked, “Do you feel like I/we/they abandoned you?” While every fiber of my being wanted to scream out “Yes, yes, yes!” I instead responded, “Well, abandoned is a strong word.” I still waffle, a lot, and have a hard time expressing what I want or need, what I expect and what is uncomfortable or not right for me. I tend to diminish myself in order that others will not feel uncomfortable or offended, even when it is uncomfortable for me.

I will still sit in a restaurant and tell the waiter everything is Okay even though the dressing for my salad is not what I ordered, and I still haven’t received my water and the entre I ordered is not what I expected and I don’t like it. I still say "I’m sorry" too often when I inadvertently do something that irritates a friend or family member. I feel guilty when I have to say “No.” I can’t tell people when I feel kicked to the curb and I feel guilty for feeling kicked to the curb. Not too long ago, I was picked up at an airport by a driver who seemed irritated he had missed me when I deplaned and had to find me in baggage claim even though he had been hired by the Conference to find me. I felt guilty for not being found. “I’m sorry,” I said. “My airplane was early.” He ignored me as he grabbed up my baggage and strode off towards the limousine, leaving me to scamper behind him, trying to keep up with his rapid step. The ride from the airport to the hotel, about forty-five minutes, was excruciating as rap music screamed at me through the audio speakers. I hated it, but could not bring myself to ask the driver to turn it off even as I considered the controls of the system right above my head.

Maybe I learned to be passive, how not to make too many waves, as a child, so to compensate I became that proverbial overachiever, the hopeful people pleaser. Maybe childhood is where it happened for most of us passive personality people. It might have been that our voices were not recognized and our independence was squelched by angry and frustrated responses. Perhaps affirmation and value was not reflected back to us enough so now we spend the balance of our lives doing our utmost to make ourselves acceptable and people pleasing when the real goal is to recognize our own value. Or maybe I’m just afraid I will be rejected if I insert me into the equation. But it seems to me that this has happened anyway, even as I’ve done my best to keep me, myself and I a non-threat to the person and place of others.

Let’s face it. The majority of the people whose lives have intersected with ours in the past may never take the time to recall our name or even remember that they ever professed a care for us. And, yes, we may spend the rest of our lives trying to assert ourselves without any of that nasty concomitant guilt and repressed anger. Our family and friends may even balk when we begin to take our own needs and concerns into consideration before we acquiesce to their requests. I am not talking about selfishness or vanity, but about building healthier relationships that can only begin with an emotionally healthier me. From my view, I think that when we begin to recognize and appreciate our own worth and all that we bring to the table of life, our relationships will begin to improve exponentially, a blessing for which none of us will ever need to apologize.