As I write this, I
am sitting at the kitchen table of Lorie's family. Lorie herself
currently lives in a neighboring city, having moved out about a year
ago. It's midnight; I'm going to go to bed on the family's couch
after finishing this.
Now and then, I
overstay my comfortable welcome at the dorms. It doesn't help at all
that we're coming up on the close of the year. This coming week is
the last week of classes. Then I have finals week. And then I'm off
for summer, including my ten-day trip to Japan(!)
Tonight,
however, I needed
to get away. It was not my intent to leave the dorms this weekend. I
wanted to hold out until the three-day weekend after classes ended;
then I could make the first round of bringing stuff home so that
packing for summer wouldn't be so much of a production. However,
things happened that made it intensely uncomfortable to stay in the
dorms for very much longer. I needed to get away, or something bad
would have happened.
Here's
a tip from one who's made her mistakes: Don't ever open up to people.
Especially
if you're doing it because you're trying to help people. By
extension, don't ever try to help people in the first place, either.
I
thought I recognized my roommate going through the same crap I was
this time last year. She stays up late, she eats a sleeve of Oreos in
one go, she doesn't seem particularly happy. Okay, it's finals
season; I'm not exactly a basket of rainbows either, but I still find
things to laugh about. And see; she's a lot
more
extroverted than I am. When she suddenly got all quiet, I noticed.
Me, I can go a whole day without saying a word to anyone, and that's
normal.
She usually at least said "Hey" when she came in the door.
That's the sort of stuff I get tired of; it's exhausting to greet
everyone that I know through a friend of an acquaintance every time I
see them.
Yeah, okay, I recognize all of my own faults in this, but let me
finish.
I
left her a note before I skedaddled off to class, trying to breach
the subject and basically check in that she was okay. I told her what
I was going through this time last year, and that I didn't want the
same from her. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, and I made note of
that in the... note... My heart was in the right place; I couldn't
just stand to the side and watch her go through that, knowing the
hell I went through trying to get out
of
the cycle of binge, self-hatred, binge some more. Depression is not
fun. It is nothing to be messed with. Do not say you're depressed if
you're just upset that your favorite Idol wannabe didn't win, or
whatever people get "depressed" over nowadays. I digress
(even though the digression was a serious topic).
What do I get for my trouble of revealing something about my past
that I would rather forget, would rather didn't happen?
I get a long text chewing me out, throwing everything back in my
face, and four attacks against me.
According to the roommate:
1
– She goes and actually hangs out with people instead of being
alone on her side of the room (guess who spends all their time on
their side of the room? Did she forget that I have friends I hang out
with, too?)
2 – She's staying up late because she's taking eighteen credits,
and she's a normal person who loves junk food (So I'm not normal
because I don't down a whole sleeve of Oreos in one sitting at
midnight?)
3
– She doesn't talk to me anymore because I've been coming off as
very unapproachable (I am introverted.
Learn the
difference.
Sometimes I just don't feel like talking much at all, and that is
normal.)
4 - …And she is not the only one who thinks that way. (Great; I'm
still in high school, where people didn't like me because they
thought I was weird for being an introvert and on my own all the
time. Way to admit that you've been gossiping about me, too. Are you
going to tell all your friends about what I revealed in this note,
too?)
Am I overreacting? Maybe. I apologized for upsetting her, saying I
was glad I was wrong if that was the case. And then she made like
things were a-okay, but next time please express my feelings to her
face instead of in a note, because it's the respectful thing to do.
Okay... the jury is out on this one. I get very uncomfortable with
confrontations, even mild ones. I'm even nervous to ask for small
favors. The note was the way I felt most comfortable bringing it up,
especially when it was so out of the blue.
And then she tells me she's sorry for criticizing me... LIES.
She's had plenty of time to mull over exactly how she feels about me.
I think she meant every word she said, and I don't think she would
have said it any differently.
You know what the respectful thing is to do? Wait until you've calmed
down before flying off the handle. Maybe she genuinely is okay with
things now, but I'm not interested in being her friend anymore. She
revealed too much. I don't know how many people she's going to share
that information with. Or who. She's already lost all of my trust.
And she is not going to get it back.
This isn't the "Christian thing to do." I don't care. I'm
not perfect. My job is to be like Christ, I know. But I feel like
calling in sick for the moment. Today, I learned a valuable lesson
about opening up to other people: it's a horrible idea. It's why I
don't do it. Which is why people call me unapproachable or even
"cold."
And you wanna know what happens when you call me unapproachable or
cold?
I close up even more. Sometimes, if I expected better from you, I
close up just to spite you. Always, I do it to protect myself. If
you'll attack the core of the kind of person I am, you don't need to
have any more surface ammo to use against me. You've already shaken
me out of my comfort zone, because I thought you respected me more
than that.
You'd better be ready for me to ignore you completely.
Because here's a tip: if I ever get the feeling that you don't accept
me for who I am, you are suspect.
And
here's another, more important and relevant tip: if you ever throw my
differences from you in my face like there's something wrong with me,
then you are gone
from my life.
End of story.
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