Flaws

Everyone has them. Sometimes they just aren’t so easy to embrace. That’s especially if your flaws don’t fall into the categories that mean that little bit more. The sort of flaws you wish you didn’t have, or that made life more pleasurable in the best possible way if they didn’t exist.

One of my favourite books (Happy, by Fearne Cotton) mentions flaws. To make the statement she used to define flaws, I will tell you what my interpretation is.

I’m flawed. I make mistakes. I sometimes judge others. I say stupid things. I have been naive. I have regrets. I can be impatient. I lose perspective at times. This is me!!!

To start off with, one of my biggest regrets was almost rushing my relationship with a person. Relationships are tough. They are incredibly tough for me to understand, especially when at the back of my mind I have a feeling of being let down. What hurts the most is that other people could’ve predicted it. Other people chimed in and said their thoughts on my relationship. It couldn’t have possibly ended any worse for me. And it has also made me question whether I could really rebound from that in the future.

I can’t lie, one of my biggest problems in life is my ability to develop interpersonal skills. While over the past couple of months I’ve been further developing this, there are still moments where social media rears its ugly head.

The moment I lost a sense of confidence with people and how to develop strong friendships was when I was in my middle school. One of my good friends was able to make the easy transition and met people he knew from other schools. So I felt left out. Some could say I was jealous. But quite honestly, if people would define me as this I don’t think you understand.

You see, this was at a point I knew I was no good at the whole group gimmick, or at least with certain people. These sorts of people never involved me, but it was the sort of situation I didn’t want to be involved in anyway to save myself from the whole “being loved for something I’m not” situation. In essence, being 2 faced. I really don’t like people who are 2 faced or people who have to change personality to suit others who’s personality is so far away from theirs.

Being judgemental is part of my second nature at times too. I say what I see in front of me. But in a world where people are seemingly more offended by things than they used to be, I’m someone who feels locked in a cage. I sometimes feel I don’t have the ability to exercise my opinions with tact. But then that’s me.

The only thing I could say is, deal with it. I’m not the only person who is judgemental in this world. For the most part, in one context or another I’ve been described as an eloquent speaker. This is when you’re speaking to me on a good day. But that doesn’t prevent me from having the fire inside of me to be ready to say things that may hurt others.

One such situation that gets on my nerves a lot does involve social media. While I understand that there are quite a few people out there who struggle with mental health (me included) I always feel let down when people don’t reply to my messages or interact with me. And I understand that people are busy… I get that. But it doesn’t hurt to say something nice or polite, you know. Something like, “I’m sorry but I’m not available to talk tonight, how about tomorrow”.

But it doesn’t stop there. Previously in life I’ve been treated like a mug. People playing mind games with me. What I mean by this, is that I feel obliged to ask people why they aren’t able to speak to me, because I get the feeling a lot of the time that people are available to speak but they don’t want to speak to me. I’ve not just had one situation like this either.

Admittedly, I am the sort of person who will tell people why I’m not able to speak to them if they wanted to speak to me. Just so I give them that sense of knowing rather than thinking the endless what, if or but questions. Yes… In short… Overthinking. Something I can never stop doing.

One other flaw I have is that my ideology has not been able to change that life is a race. I see people the same age as me who are seemingly further on in life than me. I also see no end of people on my social medias sharing all these mental health posts and inspiring quotes and I just think please can you not post something that’s so obvious but something where nothing is done to make it reality. This isn’t Harry Potter. I don’t live in a mad fantasy that I can say some magic spell and some things could change for me.

I live in the real world all the time. I make sure things match up mostly to realism and I define myself as a pessimist. So I don’t expect much or maybe I have the inkling of hope but then feel like “who am I kidding of course this won’t happen, don’t be stupid.”

What I’d love to have happen is for people to be able to interact with me and talk to me. Obviously, we aren’t friends with everyone in this world, and I for one am very particular about the sort of people who I’m friends with. My mission is to find friends who will give back to me as much as I’ve given to all my friendships without return since the dawn of time. I want to find people who help me grow. People who bring out the best in me as a human being. People I can enjoy doing fun things with (hopefully if I get a chance to meet them).

So this is me being totally honest about my flaws. I felt it was about time I did this. I think by doing this, I will in some ways get the picture of which people will want to make the effort to understand me and continue their relationship with me.