I'm kind of boggled.
I just tried to study Spanish for two hours and actually studied for perhaps twenty minutes. The rest of the time I spent talking to my Spanish partner. This guy is freaking cool, people. I'm not sure I've ever been more curious about and intrigued and wowed by someone else than they are by me (and I know that's self-centered, but it's also the
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Thank you for writing this in this way. (This is by no means a slight in the direction of Rachael; as a matter of fact, that I'm reading your words this way has a lot to do with the fact that I just spoke with her and am figuring out where I really stand here.)
I am sorry that I make you feel like that. There's no excuse for that. There are a lot of reasons I can give to try to convey my confusion here, and how I didn't mean to hurt anybody, but rock-bottom I should know better than to get so wrapped up in myself that I can't see anyone else.
I've been aware for a couple of years that I get self-absorbed, that I stop listening well, that I get high on my own star to the exclusion of paying real attention to the people around me. I am sorry. I've felt like that from other people before and I hated it, and now it makes sense that I hated it so much because I probably understood that it was a taste of my own medicine, and that's always a little extra bitter.
Let me see if I can try to describe why this is hard for me, even when I understand what's happening. The thing is-- I really am trying to keep a tension between confidence and humility. I can kind of hear myself when I speak to you, hence all the "this is self-centered but ..." I just haven't given enough thought to what an effect that has on the people around me, let alone what it means about how I view them.
I don't think that I'm like this with all of my friends these days. You guys from the old dark days get the worst of it, and I think it may be because you knew me when I was so self-hating and miserable, and you told me all the time that I was a special and cool person, so I feel somehow like I should show you my confidence now that I've grown up a little. I feel like in some ways we bonded on a basis of shared confusion and chaos, and I haven't gotten through the phase where I bounce to the other side of the spectrum. I feel like I flung myself into self-congratulation because I don't know how to keep it in balance yet, and it appears that among my old friends I haven't really even been trying. Like I said, I don't have any perspective about what I'm really like. At the moment I feel like I am cool and interesting and I can do neat things and I feel confident, and I'm not at all self-hating-- and some of this is such a change from recent years, and I've always talked about myself so much, that I'm apparently just talking to you about how cool and interesting I am and not hearing what you're saying. Since I don't know where I stand, I'm much more low-key with people who don't know me well, or just who haven't known me long, but I guess I stopped trying to look any certain way with you and just said what came into my head. But that's not fair, that's using you as a sounding board for my own self-esteem instead of being your friend. I just didn't really realize I was doing that.
And I'm sorry. I don't think I understood much of this at all before I started writing about it tonight. I think that I've been taking you, my old friends, for granted, and forgetting that whole friendship-has-two-whole-people-in-it thing. Thank you for reminding me, even though it kind of felt like being punched in the stomach. Today that seems to have been what it takes. Thank you for loving me enough to love me where I am-- even when I'm in an un-giving and un-seeing place. Thank you for believing I can climb back out even if it takes a whole bunch of tries.
I will try.
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