never apologize for showing feeling…

People who know me know that I don’t get angry. Not properly, anyhow. Sure, I’ll say I’m angry, but I rarely do anything about it. I seldom confront the person who has upset me, and more often than not, I’ll work it out in my head that it was my fault to begin with. Over the course of time, I’ve programmed myself to believe that I don’t have the right to be angry. That’s bad enough in and of itself. Unfortunately, I’ve also let the people I surround myself with get away with making me feel like my own true feelings aren’t appropriate.

For years, people have asked me what I want. That’s a very difficult question for me to answer. I don’t feel comfortable saying what I want, especially if it solely benefits me. But you know what I’ve (very) slowly been learning with the help of therapy? That wanting things for myself once in a while is okay. It sounds like such a simple concept, but it truly is a hard one for me to grasp.

So when I actually gather up the courage to state that I want to take a road trip for something insignificant… that’s huge. To clarify, “gathering up courage” means spending hours agonizing over how and when to say it. It means rehearsing over and over and over again in my head, and then backing out several times before I spit it out. It means being scared to death of saying “I want” instead of asking “Can we?”. Point being, it was a terrifying step for me to take. You can imagine, then, that when the reaction is “Seriously? You want to do that? Why would you do that when you can just get it online?”, it’s basically a slap across the face.

Unfortunately, old habits die hard, and I succumb to thinking that I’m an idiot for having such a ridiculous idea. Bothered enough that it had me up at 3 in the morning wishing I had never opened my mouth in the first place. After half an hour of my husband doing damage control and cleaning up a mess that nobody realized existed, I was still upset. It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t upset about my idea being called dumb and a waste of time. Yes, that was a bit hurtful. What was more hurtful was that I was made to feel like I had no right to be hurt in the first place.

For once in my life, I was brave enough to own my feelings and to not apologize for them… and in the end, I was still being stupid. This is why I’m horrible at being angry – because every single time I express frustration over something, I’m told that things aren’t that bad or I’m just overreacting or I just need to get over it or that it’s a dumb thing to be mad about. I’m willing to concede that maybe my perception of the situation is sometimes wrong or false. But just because that perception is skewed doesn’t mean that the feelings that arise in reaction aren’t true. Have you ever been speeding on the highway and had a police officer suddenly appear in your rearview mirror? The natural reaction is that feeling of panic, that you’re going to get caught… and then he passes by you. Your perception of the situation was wrong, but that fear was still very real.

The worst part is that this attempt at standing up for myself went poorly enough that it’s like I’ve fallen off the horse in regards to the progress I had been making in therapy with recognizing and acknowledging my feelings. In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t even a big deal. How’s it going to be when it comes to something that actually matters? Makes me want to stay off the horse and just stick to walking.