Self-analysis sucks, or: A confession of my inner sins

I realized today that I have a terrible habit of being cruel and cold to the people I care about, whose opinions matter to me, and whose respect I crave. I realized that I am always on the offensive, trying to hurt before I can be hurt, or at least, trying to prove by simple strength (of mind/conviction/language) that I am worthy of respect.

I'm not sure if most people want to read the rest of this. What follows is a confession of many of the things that I think about, and perhaps more importantly, why I do the things I do and say the things I say (or leave unsaid the things that I can't say). It's random and poorly structured, stream-of-consciousness, and almost too close to the quick for me. So... read at your own risk: the risk of getting a little too close to my inner world for comfort.



Read the whole post


I am passive-aggressive. I am frequently defensive. I have no close relationships outside of my family, no trusted friend to spill my life out to. I hide behind a huge vocabulary and high ideals and false anger and jadedness. I hide behind humor. I'm hiding the bulk of this post behind a little HTML trick I learned. I hide my face with my hands when I talk, as if I do not want my words to escape.

I am not faking it when I'm being nice, either. And I may be imagining my own cruelty, or at the very least, distorting it more than necessary. Or I may not be imagining it at all, and that worries me.

Someone told me once that I am the type of person who can get along with just about anybody. The risk there is that I become saccharine-sweet, the sort of person whose kindness seems false and opportunistic. On the other hand, the risk is that I get stepped on because I don't stand up for myself. The second risk there is that I become boring.

There is a lot of fear in me. There is a lot of timidity in me. I am oh so afraid that if I change my habits and attitudes in any way, I will no longer be liked or loved. I hope and pray that this is a baseless fear, and I am also terrified that it is not.

Here's the thing: if I know you, I probably like you. Not that sort of non-committal "eh, I like him/her" that people give when you ask what they think of a person. I truly, genuinely like most people, and the ones I don't like are most likely not reading this anyway. I tend to be very quiet about it; after all, who really does that anyway? Who cares about other people enough to honestly like just about everyone they meet?

Well.... me. I do. I have a hard time showing it. I'm bad at small talk. Hell, I'm just bad at keeping up my part of a conversation. I love to listen.

Also, I'm scared to let people into my inner world, because, along with all the nice things inside, there are some not-so-nice things. And there are embarrassing things. And there are things that I can feel but never share because I might harm other people or the relationships I have with them, and that would tear me apart.

I think about these things a lot.

I know more about myself than I care to know. I'm almost willing to go back to complete ignorance about my own thought patterns in exchage for not having to fully realize the consequences of everything I do. But I realize, I analyze, I think. And I do it because I don't want to hurt anyone.