Old Friends

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting in person someone I've only known online for the past 11 years. I met Mark while playing a MMORPG called Dark Age of Camelot. If that sounded like a whole lot of letters that meant absolutely nothing, essentially an online roleplaying game where lots of people play together, in this case to kill medieval-y bad guys.

Since Mark met me many years ago, he's had to hear many stories about life and how it didn't line up with my vision of what it could be. As I said to him last night while we were reminiscing, I was not a happy person back then. I hadn't yet picked up any self awareness books, classes or counseling. I largely thought of life as this big ball of suck that just kept happening to me, even though my grievances were very minor compared to many others'. The point being I didn't know myself at all and I had a very hard time negotiating life as a result.

Mark was also someone who was allowed to read my stories throughout the years, even before I went back to school for creative writing. He declared himself the President of my fan club, even though at the time he was practically its only member. Even though we'd never met in person, Mark saw Me (which was a feat considering how much utter nonsense I spewed about myself, since I was completely ignorant of my strengths, talents and ability to just be.) I was a people pleaser, convinced that I had to work excessively hard at making people like me. In fact, I distrusted people who instantaneously liked me because I readily identified with the voice of my inner critic.

I now know that inner voice to be completely full of crap but it took me a good number of years to sort it out. Mark didn't need years. He was a lot more perceptive than I (until now) gave him credit for.

This post has me thinking about a few others who didn't buy the song and tap dance I was continuously putting on and just loved me, where I was at, even if they didn't agree with all of my choices. I'm Incredibly blessed to have had a significant number of those type of people in my life, including my parents, which I know to be a more rare occurrence.

In an effort to be that type of person for others, I commit to loving others, especially when they can't or don't know how to love themselves. Another brilliant quote Alissia read to me recently was "Being mad at ignorant people for acting ignorantly is about as useful as being mad at a blind person for not being able to see." (That quote is most definitely not verbatim, but you get the point). When people choose to be constantly negative and perpetuate the belief that they are a victim, I often find that incredibly frustrating. I know how incredibly defeating such patterns were for me but I can't just place my learning into anyone else's head. (Heck, sometimes it doesn't even stay in my own head!) In my continuing quest to be of service, I'm going to look for new ways to help someone determined to see everything that is wrong with their life, to find things to be positive about. My bigger challenge though, is to try to do it in a new way that I haven't tried before. I'm not certain what that will look like, but I'm looking forward to the brainstorming session. I'm certain some interesting stuff will come out of it.