Confessions

I have always been emotional person, and it had always led to me to problems I later come to regret.

Even when I don't vocalize my thoughts, my expressions are always obvious and apparent, so people quickly learn that I wear my heart on my sleeve.  When I am sad, I am very sad. When I am angry, I am very angry.  Most of the time, when I'm happy, I am excessively enthusiastic and bubbly--which is how most people see me.  But I don't believe this is for a crazy, deeply complex meaning.  I am just very expressive of my emotions.  I rarely hold back.

I've been told often that I care too much about what people think.  I've also been told that I should work harder on filtering the expressions of my emotions.  I've been advised to have a better poker face.  These are the thoughts I always return to when I emotionally crash.  And when I say I crash, I really do find myself in a seemingly dark abyss that I'd build for myself and dramatically crawl into.  After a while, it becomes nearly impossible to get myself out, as I regret myself the deeper I dig, which only fuels me to hide even further.

(Excuse my excessive use of figurative language, I've been drinking wine.)

In any case, I find myself hiding because in these situations, I've used up all my energy and I just need somewhere to go.  You see, I'm not really an extrovert, though I can come off as outgoing.  I actually think my outgoing facade only comes from the fact that I am so aware of the people around me, from being a silent and self-conscious sponge, soaking observations of my surroundings.  In my people-pleasing tendencies, I try to play up what I think people want.  But then I get tired.  And when I'm alone, I regret my over compensation.  I second-guess my actions, and I think... that probably wasn't want people were wanting in the first place. I was wrong.

What makes me feel worse is knowing that my attempt to make everyone happy can be seen as selfishly done to feed my own ego.  Well, fuck.  I honestly do it because I have this heavy fear looming over me that it is my fault if people aren't--for whatever reason-- satisfied with shit, and I keep trying to do something, thinking that if I do it, I can make it better.  I don't do it because I want to go around feeling like the best. I don't think I'm the shit, I just wanna get rid of your bad shit.  You know what I mean?  For whatever reason, when I feel like I'm falling short of something, I feel like I'm not doing my job.  I admit, there are only a few times when I can actually look at the other person, or the other side of it, and honestly say: I recognize that everyone contributes, it's not only you or only me.

I suppose tonight marks another point in my life when I fall into a sharp decline.  But, I believe, it is within good reason.  I have actually been underestimating all the people around me by consuming myself with ways of not letting them get hurt--but realistically, within reason, they will be fine.  I will be fine.  I have actually been behaving in my own selfish efforts in manipulating situations to avoid negativity when in fact, it had been me all along who could not handle unpleasant moments.  I'm the one who's shouting to cover awkward silences. I'm the one who bends over backwards just to avoid feeling guilt or sadness with someone else.  I am the one who cannot handle the inevitable reality.  I haven't been helping anyone. I was only thinking about myself.

There's always that cliche message: help yourself before you can help anyone else.  In my emphatic efforts to share myself and my emotions, I had been bringing about a roller coaster dynamic to the environment: if I was happy, everyone would have to be happier, but when I was sad, I was bringing everyone else down with me.  But I think I can be more mature about things.  Maybe I can help myself by doing that, rather than just thinking about myself all the time.