Tonight I was feeling really apprehensive and kinda …argh, “I don’t want to do this” about meeting someone for lunch. My typical response to these kinda feelings are a stern talking to to myself, “Sanj, stop being lazy”, “Sanj you need to deny yourself” “Just smile and get through it”and quickly tamping down the emotions.
But today I stopped this automatic response of mine and asked myself the simple question, ‘why?’ why do I feel this way about meeting this person?” Why should something that should be enjoyable (meeting a friend for lunch) be such a chore?”
Okay, just a small pause here….this is kinda revolutionary stuff for a compliant, smile to the world and be happy kinda girl like me. To acknowledge and question negative feelings is not something I really do….I am much more likely to pretend it is not there. It is too uncomfortable…it hints at something missing, something being wrong, and I am too afraid to usually face these things.
I have much more exploring to do but I realized that I was feeling too tired to be the person that I had decided my friend wanted me to be/thought I was. I had a certain image I wanted to project a certain way I wanted her to think and I was feeling too tired to be that for her, help her with that…..even though my friend never asked it of me (nor does she have the right to). I had taken responsibility for her feelings, her reactions…when they were NOT my responsibility…hence feeling overwhelmed by them…..no shoulder can carry the burden of another’s complete well-being….we can help, aid support each other but only to a certain extent.
I am grateful I at least took the time to dig a little. I need to do a lot more of that….I feel a swirl of all sorts of other things in my heart around this matter but I can’t really define it right now. Let’s leave it at ‘need to get more honest and explore this” I feel so clueless about me.
