Something happened today that helped formalize a pattern I am seeing about feeling important. This goes into some deep stuff about who I am and why I am the way I am. If you are going to follow the cut tag, please respect my feelings. Otherwise, “Move along, nothing to see, move along”
There have been some occurrences lately where my poor little ego has been bruised and I have felt unimportant. Nobody is doing it intentionally. It has been from misunderstanding, distractions, life conflicts, different needs — nothing personal. But it has felt personal. Logically, I know it probably doesn’t mean that I am not important but that only works a few times, then it feels like I am unimportant, logic can’t do a thing for it, and I am that much more sensitive to the same thing later. The reason I call it my “poor little ego” is not because it is easily hurt and it shouldn’t be. I call it that because it is easily hurt and others seem to think it shouldn’t be. I have had many problems with people who can’t understand/accept/realize that I am easily hurt. Sorry, can’t help it. It is the ego I have and it is as strong as it gets and it takes beatings and will crumple. It happened to me for most of my time in elementary school. Didn’t get a thicker skin from that, not going to now.
Today a friend did something that once again made me fell like I wasn’t important. I knew I was but I felt I wasn’t. It was a minor issue of scheduling and I have been burned by this before. I am ready to give up. I can’t help but be hurt so it is better not to go there. My response when I don’t know any other way is to give up. I am open to other options, I just don’t have any. Well, he arrived with flowers. Logically, flowers don’t mean much to me. They are these dead things that are green and colored. But the fact he realized that I hurt from what is very normal for him and he thought about me enough to get and bring me the flowers means something to my poor little ego. The flowers aren’t a big deal in themselves (so says my logical side) but they are a medium that carries a meaning (so says my poor little ego). A previous boyfriend seems to understand that. When I was having a bad day, he would sometimes have flowers for me. Even after we broke-up. It didn’t matter if he did something wrong or if it was just life trashing me, he knew that it made me poor little ego feel better. Looking at the flowers currently on my desk is very soothing to my poor little ego. It doesn’t stop the feeling of lack of importance. It doesn’t stop being scared to deal with the scheduling issues again and being hurt. But it does add to the other side of the equation and makes my poor little ego feel important enough not to just quit.
It is these symbols of importance that help my poor little ego. And it doesn’t have to be flowers. It has been a dinner invite, a phone call, a card, an email, having food in the freezer for me, giving me a key, listening to me and being with me when I hurt… Many things give me a sense I am important to people just as there are many things that make me feel unimportant. Unfortunately, I can’t tell someone specific things that make me feel important because that would change the meaning to what is important to me and not a symbol of how important I am to them. A symbol could even be something that holds meaning for the other person that means nothing to me if it can be explained to me.
Friends and I have come up with a term for some of the positive things: Gina Glue. If I don’t get a sense of importance from people I care about, I have a tendency to either get hurt or fade from their lives. In the past I have moved from friend group to friend group when things get tough. I am trying to learn how to make it work instead.
I have been going through a hard time the last few weeks for a variety of reasons and many of my friends have been wonderful. I have talked (and talked and talked) with quite a few and the fact that they are willing to be there for me when I have nothing in return for them has been making me feel important. My poor little ego has needed it. As I heal and get a better grip with how to handle the things that are in turmoil, I won’t need so much. I will still feel important. I will stop needing to talk and connect so much and (hopefully) be able to return to a normal interaction with everyone. Thank you to everyone that has made me feel important to them.
hi shipoffools!
Hello. I notice you. *wavewave*.
Re: hi shipoffools!
We got some enneagram talking to do. Time is opening up wide. You have any free time this weekend?
Mars?
You know hon… I’m probably the only person reading this who knows exactly what you REALLY did go through in grade school… We went to school with a bunch of insensative, obnoxious, disgustingly ill-mannered little brats who made your life there a living hell.
When I graduated from high school, there were around ten people I had gone from 1st thru 12th grade with on that stage – and I realized that I detested every single one of them.
The fact that you survived that period of your life with *any* ego intact is amazing… Not because you weren’t worthwhile, and lovable, and amazing – you were!! – but because those obnoxious little oxygen-wasters managed to make you feel like you weren’t on a daily basis.
I’m sorry that you got your feelings walked on… I know wherefrom you speak. Nothing bothers me more than the feeling that I’m not valued by a friend… and I’m not terribly good at speaking up and saying “ummm hey? you made me feel like shit when you blew me off like that…”
Hugs to you… and more hugs to you… I’m so glad I found you again… You truly are one of the most amazingly wonderful people I’ve ever had the privledge to know!!!
It is nice to get outside validation. Many times I feel like I am over-exaggerating but I’m not. If anything, I play it down. I was always surprised you kept hanging out with me. I was ready for you to have had enough of being in the blast radius and head for higher ground. My mom recently wrote her understanding it and it was awful from her perspective, too. Sometimes I can’t believe my parents left me in that school for almost 4 years, not that Kindergarten and 1st grade in Pennsylvania where that much better. I understand they were thinking I needed to learn to live with “normal” stuff, but I wasn’t ready yet. Both my parents feel really bad about it, but, you know, they tried their best and it isn’t their fault. It isn’t like they are going to make the same mistake again. It has become part of who I am and that is what I have to work with.
It has long been my opinion that children are little monsters that we train to be human. That school, while really good academically with neat ideas on structure, did nothing to train the bad monsters into being human. The environment wasn’t that bad, there are places so much worse, but for who I am and how *delightfully* sensitive I am, it was a war zone. I am impressed that I came out of it with a pretty good self-image. Says a lot for the work of those people around me. *nudge nudge*
I am glad you found me too. I always figured you would show up in my life again if you managed to survive your own. I just wasn’t very aggressive at tracking you down yet.
Well I don’t know that I agree with “really good academically with neat ideas on structure” – I went back when I was in high school and told my 6th grade teachers what a disservice that school did me… no homework, no grades, no bells, no preparation for junior high – I was someone that needed the structure early – never did get into the academic routine successfully until I was pursuing the second undergrad degree in my late 20′s…
I’m not sure what that learn-to-live-with-it thing is… I had the opportunity to go to Kent (private school) instead of the system middle school… and I was ecstatic… then my Mom told me that I had somehow not passed the entrance requirements – and since I knew it wasn’t the academic testing, it had to be the interview… I was crushed – I was “not good enough”… and I was stuck with those same little (excuse the french) bastards that I’d suffered all the way through grade school with. Many years later, I found out from my Dad that I *had* been offered a spot at the school – but that my Mom had decided that it would be better for me not to go so that I would learn to “overcome my social issues”…
!!!!!!!!!!
Part of the reason I will NEVER keep Kira in a school she isn’t happy and academically challenged in – even if I have to homeschool her.
Sigh.
I miss ya hon! I have to go dig up something I wrote years ago about that time, and you and I… I had it on my website back in 1996 – hoping back then even maybe you’d find it!!
hugs!
We missed you at Plough last night. I was looking forward to talking to you. We’ll definitely need to set up times to talk now that I can’t do lunch anymore.