I sent some stuff to my mom about me around her pushing info about myself at me without getting me onboard first. I wanted to save it here to archive it and because it does explain some stuff about me. It covers some strength/weaknesses about me and how I operate. It also lists something I consider very valuable and treasure.
“Helping me explore something is great. You have done a wonderful job and I think I have grown a lot from it. I really appreciate the walls you have given me as I let go of somethings and find new ways to hold them.
I think we run into trouble when you try to tell me something I don’t want to hear. I am sorry I can’t be the type of person that listens to everything and can take everything that is told to me. I feel like I fail at being a “good” person because of this and I know that is distorted thinking but I also acknowledge that does come up. I think I am great at being able to accept a lot about myself that most people wouldn’t be able to, that I can work on myself and others in ways that are rare and wonderful. I surmise that this ability is what I do in an attempt to not being able to handle being told other things. I am great if I can discover things for myself but lousy at having something pushed at me that I am not ready for. I am sorry if this means I am “less than” in your eyes. I am sorry that it means you don’t get to have your say the way you would like to. I am sorry it means you have to watch me run into the same walls over and over because I am not ready to see them as walls in my way yet. But it is me. It is who I am and how I work. This is a square peg thing that I am not willing to even attempt to change because I don’t think I can. It is an area that is way too vulnerable and fragile to modify. Being this way protected me from having my self esteem destroyed in elementary school as well as other parts of me in other parts of my life. I regret that I can’t pick up ways to get better from being pushed at but only because it causes problems, not because I think I shouldn’t be this way. I think my way is a good way even if it is square rather than round. It is who I am and I embrace, good or bad, it for all its strengths and all its weaknesses.
I would love it if we could find a way for you to lay out or present things you think would be good for me to learn but allow me to pick them up or walk around them. I do love finding new things about me to play with.
I have an idea how hard it is to understand me and meet me where I am with a problem I am having and helping me find a way out. I figure this is tiring and imagine there is some element of “why does it always have to be your way?” involved. My way has a lot of good to it, we have solved a lot of our issues by giving into my way. But that doesn’t mean my way is the only right way and it isn’t fair. I am doing what I can to learn other ways and try to make them work as well. Sadly, I think that it usually means that I learn someone else’s way and it becomes another one of my ways so I am not really changing at all. I can tell you it means a lot to me to have someone that can meet me inside of my way of thinking and help me bounce ideas around that I can’t get to myself. Something I also value enormously is people that have let me see how they really thing (this usually involves a lot of exposing vulnerabilities on their part) which allows me to adapt my ways to include what they need/want. I feel so honored when people trust me with that sort of info and when they allow me to help them. That is a richness in life I think it worth it and I find it very rare and only shows up infrequently. It is something I actively search for and in some ways makes it harder to be around for friends. It feels very risky for most people. This is why I want to find other people, people who value this. Of course, people that are like this a lot scare me and make me want to hide. I am aware of that too.
I may be narrow but that is because I am picky. I am picky because I am vulnerable and I hurt so easily. I am careful, oh so careful, to surround myself with things that will hurt me as little as possible. Yes that does make life hard. Yes, I probably making my life harder than it needs to be because of this choice. But I need it because I don’t know how to let it go and still not get massively hurt. You and I had email to relieve some of our issues and have reaped the rewards of not running into defenses. We were able to discuss our walls and make better, smaller ones and systems of notifying each other where the sensitive areas are so we could dismantle so much of our armory and we get to enjoy the juicy wonderfulness that was protected before. I can imagine that you can see this wonderful field of opportunity laying before me just waiting for me to step into it but I don’t have a safe way to get to it. Polton is a good example of how hurt I can get
by things that most people can just brush off.”