Understanding

How much am I going to own up to my own quirks and insecurities in this particular blog. Hmmm let's see how it pans out shall we?

I'll start with a sad truth. A very old friendship broke down recently. I was angry at first and then when the dust settled, I was sad. I knew that we both had a part to play in it, we'd both upset each other on quite a deep level. Without meaning to hurt anyone, we'd both pushed buttons, poured salt into wounds, touched delicate nerves... and probably many other cliches. This is what happens when you know someone well enough to get right to their most buried insecurities.

At the end of the day, we just didn't really see eye to eye any more and we were getting frustrated with each other.

But when someone you love turns to you and lists all the things they consider you to be doing wrong, you kind of have to ask yourself a few questions. You may start with 'Can I really love this person if they're going to say shit like that to me,' but you'd have to be pretty thick skinned not to eventually find yourself asking questions that are more along the line of 'do I really do that?'

I did.

And then I wanted to know how much of it was the truth and how much of it was just her hurt and anger coming out.

I've since decided that it was a mixture of both, and in fact, much of it was even more complicated than that. In some cases, it was likely that I she was reading my actions completely differently to how I intended. And a big lesson that I've learnt from this whole malarky is that I have a tendency to want to 'make everything better', which isn't necessarily a good thing.

I suppose as a creative person, my line of sight is always what things can be rather than what they are right now. I didn't realise how much of an effect this has, not just on my creative projects, but on everything about me. I do it with food, I do it with my living space, with my job, even with the people in my life. I can always see potential. To me that has always meant looking at things and not just seeing their face value, but seeing all the good stuff that's there waiting to spring to life if it could just be given the chance. But I never looked at this from the flip side of the coin before.

It makes sense that if a person seems unhappy, there is potential for them to be happy if they're just given the chance. But I've started to understand that you can't always help them to do this, and that sometimes by trying to find some sort of 'cure' you can easily create further problems. For a start, ackowledging that there's something 'wrong' with them or their lives may just add fuel to the fire. They might feel belittled, or smothered, no matter how good your intentions are.

And once I had accepted that I did sometimes act this way and probably had upset my friend by doing it, something struck me... Jesus, I was even doing it to myself.

It occurred to me that when I'm unhappy with my life, 99% of the time it's because I can see what I would like it to be and hate the fact that it's not that way right now. I can see the potential but I can't seem to unleash it. I always called this 'hope' in the past, or 'goals', or 'ambitions'. But now I am beginning to wonder (and I'll put the emphasis on beginning as this is really the first time I've considered it)  whether I am, in a way, smothering myself?!

I realised I may have upset my friend by trying to fix things when she didn't want them to be fixed. I decided at this point that I would, from now on, accept the people in my life for what they are right now. That way I wouldn't frustrate my current friends (ie trying to make things better for them, and ending up making them worse), and I also wouldn't risk more anguish to myself by getting close to people who would inevitably hurt me in the end (ie becoming fixated on how great they could be if they just stopped being such a twat)! But what I hadn't considered is that I could do this for myself as well! Have I been going about this all topsy-turvy? Have I been trying to unleash this uncovered potential and fix myself and my life, while all along it would have been better just to say 'Well this is me right now' and accept it?

Well, I don't know right now how I feel about this. I might end up just deciding that this new way of looking at things is just another rule I'm writing for myself. I don't even know if it is possible to completely accept your life and not want to change it... but right now it seems to make sense that I may find everything easier if I just give myself a bit of a break.