monologue

i highly recommend this book Difficult Conversations. It's changing my life so much now, and i'm learning much more about myself and how i interact with others. it's especially pertinent when you have to deal with unexpected things and issues you never thought you'd care so much about. when you have to deal with people. when you have to negotiate salaries, resolve disputes, resolving difficult internal issues you have with yourself. 

here goes a lengthy monologue. ignore if you're bored, but they are some issues i've been questioning about and by typing it up, it's making things clearer for myself. they're pretty private too, so i'm hoping only my target guy will be reading this...

about the crying, i didn't realize how i was making you feel everytime i cry. i never asked you, because when i cry i'm being self-absorbed and i can't hear anything anyone says unless it is filtered to my own pre-conceptions. when i cry i think i'm a loser and i'm hopeless and helpless and i've made mistakes and you've made mistakes and i hate everyone and everything in the world. if you scold me more, it reinforces my ideas and i cry more in self-pity, but if you compliment me and say it's ok i cry more because i think it's not true and you are just thinking i'm that wonderful good person. so there's no real solution to my crying because my brain filters everything out according to what i believe.

i need to recognize that a lot of things are out of my control and it's ok for me to be unhappy or upset, but i should learn to see the other side of the conversation. i should learn to see how i'm making you feel, how you feel devastated and how you feel helpless that you can't stop my crying and seems like no matter what you do, it just makes me feel worse. you feel like it's your fault for making me cry, and i reinforce that because i don't want to admit to myself i'm a crybaby, that i cry all the time for seemingly inane and useless reasons.

yesterday, when you finally burst and told me you hate it too, you feel devastated each time i cry, something changed in me. you broke through my insulated bubble and reached me. for the first time, i truly heard you. i think the only times i listen to you more carefully is when you tell me you have problems too, that you are upset too. i absorb it all like a drowning person reaching for air, because i need it to anchor myself. because you are feeling what i'm feeling and i can best empathize when you are in a similar state of mind as me. and you seem to be living well and you aren't crying or anything, and it gives me new motivation and a new focus. to draw attention away from me, myself and i, and instead to focus on a new problem, a new person. that's what anchors me to life and sanity. to happiness.

now i have a new motivation to not want to cry. other than my identity issues which are encouraging me to stop crying because i don't want to be a crybaby, i don't want to be a bad person who makes others feel bad, i don't want to be a bad girlfriend, i don't want to be an immature girl who only knows how to cry to solve problems. i don't want to look ignorant and stupid, i don't want to look incompetent and all i can do is cry and wait for you to help me. but when i cry, i am giving you the lifeline to pull me up. i am also trying to warn you against recreating similar scenarios (ie. avoid the contributions that lead to my crying), but it isn't obvious and it isn't the right way to do this. now my new motivation shall be for you, for our relationship. i will try my best to communicate how helpless i feel,  how terrible this seems to me, how it is impacting how i see myself and my identity. i will do my best to tell you everything.

i need to learn that it is ok to make mistakes, it is ok to cry even if i think that is a horrible mistake and should never have been a feature of human race, even if i hate it and how it screws up my eyes and my emotions and gets me all puffy and riled up. crying is a form of release, and i must learn to let go instead of dwelling more on it and forcing solutions immediately. everything takes time, and crying is only one way. i need to focus more on the other ways to slowly change myself and others and the ways i go about doing things so i can feel better about it. so that you can feel better about it.