Social Time-Bomb in 3…2…1

Isn’t it mind-blowingly annoying how bad we are all (and by all, I mean me) prone to wanting what we don’t have.

For me, it’s not the material jealousy that gets to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I want lots of material things I cant have.  Vacations.  New cars.  A maid and something that automatically does your laundry for you…..  But I can bring myself back to perspective pretty easily by realizing I am among the richest people in the world.  It’s humbling to know that to the majority of people alive on this planet, I am incredibly rich.

So it’s easy to refocus from my quest for a home with a backyard and secret underground lair.

Even my desire for a perfect body type can be shut down with some deeper thinking. Sure, I would love to be someone who could eat whatever and however much they wanted and still look great naked.  I wish I could throw on trendy clothes without it becoming painfully clear that my body was not built for strapless shirt or skinny jeans (though I attempt to wear the jeans anyways).
It’s also (relatively) easy to remind myself that I am a healthy and happily married 30 year old women and the extra pounds and stretch marks that have come with my life are just that, a part of my life.  I will not be judged at the end of this life for love handles or sagging bits.  So contentment with my appearance, that comes eventually too (I’m still waiting for it, but I am sure it comes.)

So what is it that is bothering me?  It’s what is more obnoxious and harder to quit – my envy of people with different personality types than my own.

If we have never met in person, you might not realize, but I am, well, loud.  Obnoxious.  Outspoken.  My voice raises when I am exited about what I am talking about.  I am social, I like to meet people and, well, I like to talk.  It’s what I do.  Put me in front of a quiet, reserved person and I will keep talking and talking and talking until I eventually say something completely ridiculous that makes me look bat-shit crazy.  Honest  Happens every time.

I’m also kinda a bitch.  I am not easily offended so I assume others are not either and end up offending them.  If someone is sensitive, watch out.  I may very well steamroll over you without even noticing.

The route between my brain and my mouth is far to fast.  I need a bigger filter.  A take-back button.  An undo.

So things like facebook, twitter, blogging… they are good for me.  I don’t type as fast as you think I do mostly because I overthink the things I write.  I edit out a lot.  I re-write and a lot of the time end up writing nothing when I started out writing a whole novel in a comment box.

So I think it’s funny when people think I am really strong, brave, kind or nice.  I’m not particularly.

We all know that people pretend to look better than they do online, right?  When all the images you see of me we posted by me, you can be very sure that I picked the ones that were much better looking than I am in real life.  I assume that of most people so I feel better about myself.

And when all your comments, statuses and private messages are filtered, edited and proof-read, it is not hard to come across as a kind, gentle, caring person. Trust me.

And as for brave, well, it is easy to think the army wife you read about in the blog is incredibly courageous when you are not the one she whines and cries to in month 2 of deployment.  Or, lets  not kid ourselves, hour 6 of spring exercise.  

It is very, very easy to look like a great person on facebook.  It is entirely a different thing to actually BE that person.

Since I can remember, I have wished I had a different personality type.  The quiet, soft spoken one.  The wallflower.  The one who you have to actually work to get to know.  Those people have always seemed more worth knowing to me than, well, than loud, obnoxious, wearing their heart on their sleeve me.  People assume a lot of things about loud people: that they can’t be trusted, can’t keep secrets, are gossips who dont know when to shut up.

And that’s not true,  I know when to shut up.  I just never manage to actually get that message across to my mouth.

But the most misunderstood assumption – people mistake outgoing with self-assured.

Well you know what?  I didn’t want to be the one you could hear talking down the hall in Jr. High school.  I wished I wasn’t the one who always got “socializes too much in class” on my report card.  I spent high-school nights re-thinking everything I said or did at a party wishing I could take most of it back.

And I still do.  Especially that last part.  Even to the point that I will go through stages where I almost drop off of facebook because I don’t want to be one of those people who look like they are always online.  I rethink conversations and phone calls and wish I had gone into them with a script so that I remembered when to listen and when to say nothing.  I am convinced that my friends must regularly walk away from our time together thoroughly annoyed with the sound of my voice.

People think it’s easy, I mean, you just stop talking, right?  I wish.  Talking is like an addiction, I swear.  I will go to a social event with every intention of being quiet and still end up babbling like an idiot by the end.

In case you missed it, there’s a lot of me trying to be something I’m not.  And failing miserably.

One day years ago I confessed to some friends how much I disliked my own personality.  How envious I was of those in the group who listened well and said little.  A few days later I got a note from a friend.  She’s a little loud, a little outspoken.  And also funny and sweet and a lot of fun to be around.

In her note, she wanted to know what I didn’t like about her.  After all, if I was so uncomfortable with the loud talks-a-lot aspects of my own personality, then I must really not like her, right?  But wait.  I do like her.  I lot.

She ended her note like this “Guess what chick?  Jesus loves us too.”

And you know what?  He does.  And while there are some Bible verses about watching my tongue that I should spend more time on, at the end of the day He created me loud.  He created me a little more willing than your average person to walk into an uncomfortable situation and reach out to someone new.  Sometimes I am pretty sure I come across like a stalker.  There are days I think I probably scare most of the people I talked to that day.  But 30 years is a long time to try and change who you are, so I am just going to have to get over it. To change my prayer from asking to be changed into a wise introvert to asking  that I would use the personality I have for the Purpose He has given me.  There are plenty of aspects of me that I need to let God work on (check back to that last bit about the Verses on an unbridled tongue), but my entire personality?  I think it’s about time I recognized He was never planning on changing what He created me to be.

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