Being home schooled, I’ve spent my entire life hearing how “easy” I have things. All my friends have said it a time or two (or a lot), and then I just get disregarded. It sucks. Yeah, some things about being home schooled are easier, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, and I’ve had to deal with some things the last few years that few people I know have ever had to go through. Being disregarded, and being told I have life “easy”, really hurt. Over the years it’s made me really defensive about things, and it’s made me want to shut people out. It’s made me angry.
I was talking with a friend last night, and she said something that set me off. She didn’t mean to be hurtful, but it hurt. And, because I was hurt, I was angry. I told her that, and that I needed some time to cool off. I spent most of the night hurt and angry, and I didn’t like it. I think it’s because I knew that if we had had that conversation in person, and not over text, it could’ve been a lot worse simply because I was hurt. I was thinking some not so cool things about my friend, and I don’t know if I would’ve said them or not if we were in person.
When I woke up this morning, after I had cooled down, I realized just how easy it is for hurt people to hurt other people. I hated the idea of potentially hurting my friend just because I let my emotions get the better of me. It seems so stupid to hurt someone else because of MY situation. But, it happens. This morning my friend told me she kind of did the same thing to me, and we talked it out.
I think more often than not there’s more to the story when someone’s upset. If someone is just being a butt, and you don’t understand why, take a sec and ask them. Don’t retaliate, don’t feed their anger, just take a sec and listen. Dig deeper. It’s like a cranky little kid. You could punish them for being cranky, or you could put them down for their nap because they’re WAY tired, and that’s what’s actually wrong.
Emotions are deceptive. That’s what makes them so tricky. Often when something’s wrong, or something’s going on that I can’t really make sense of yet, I get angry. I don’t know why, but I do. I’ll walk through my house being this little ray of hate until I get things figured out. It’s easy to fix the surface problem and just say, “I should stop being angry.” But I’m not going to stop being angry until I figure out what’s making me angry.
So, to recap:
- Emotions are deceptive; if someone is angry, or upset, and you don’t know why, ask them about it; don’t just retaliate
- Hurt people hurt people; if you don’t want to hurt the people around you, you gotta work through what’s hurting you (or learn to let it go); if anything, know what hurts you so that when you’re hurt, you can take some time to cool off before talking about it