So, I have this friend who is struggling with the evil ways of how others see her and being judged. We all want to admit that the way people see us isn't important and for most of us, it's truly not. It leads me to believe she's being judged by someone she cares about.
I never gave a rats ass what people thought of the way I looked or what I wore until I met my husband. Suddenly, I wanted him to accept me. That's where I should have realized that things were going to go wrong. I didn't change anything too severe, or so I'd like to believe, but I changed things I didn't really care about. He didn't like my shoes, so I threw them out. Not because I didn't like my shoes, but because I just don't really care about shoes. If I really don't care about shoes, why would I care about getting new ones?
She recently wrote an entry about how she was judged all the time and then followed it up with who she was. She tried to define herself. That got me to thinking. Why should anyone feel they have to explain themselves? There are things that should be explained sometimes because they only work in your brain. I have plenty of these things rolling around inside all the time. Sometimes I define them for people, sometimes I let them be. It depends on their importance to that particular person.
I think I am a true believer in not having to define yourself to anyone ever. Especially with this person. I don't want to know exactly who she is. What fun would that be for future conversations. I dont' want to know someone so definitively that there's nothing else to discover. That's what makes a person. There are so many people who say they know someone so well or that they are such a good read of character, but most of us are. It's not like a big mystery to figure out if most people are telling the truth or not. It doesn't make you a genius or anything.
I am a good judge of character because I'm a good person. Put crudely, I can recognize evil. I can recognize it when it is in me, so why would I not recognize it in others. Does that make me special?
Are there poor judges of character? Yes, of course there are. For instance, one of my best friends is dating a girl that everyone can tell instantly that there is something wrong with. I don't lead them to these beliefs. It just happens. Does that make my friend a bad judge of character? No. It makes him wrong in judgement because there is something he wants more than to be able to see it. He wants a relationship. He wants to get married and make icky babies and he probably will. He won't realize until it's much too late that it was the wrong decision. It will hurt more, it will be harder to get out of, it will be heart-breaking. It will hurt everyone that cares about him. In the meantime, it's hard to be supportive. I've made made decisions, poor judgements of character to the point that it's been hard to get the friendship back to where it was. It's important to me that he knows that I'm here and that just because of this I wouldn't judge him, it's just the way things are. It's the things in life we go through to make us into we are.
I don't know how someone can expect to define themselves. We all change too often to sit down and one day say.... here world, this is who I am.... take it or leave it. We fail to recognize that most people will leave it. If we're lucky, we come to realize that it's okay. It's okay that people leave it and don't understand it.
I don't care if the person wears designer clothes or not. Do they truly like the clothes they're in is the question? Same applies to our skin and our very souls. If designer clothes would make my friend happy and she loved them because of the simple fact that she did, then I can't expect her to want to go to a thrift store or Hot Topic because she should put off a different image of herself. If she decided to change her style, that wouldn't make me like her any less either.
PEOPLE CHANGE! That is the fantastic part about people. That's why we have friends, lose friends, make out, make love, skip down the street or sit on a bench.
I recently had a friend ask me if I noticed how moody another friend of ours was. I said that of course I did. I loved that about that person. He said that he didn't. My thought was, "And that's what makes you special." We both still love our friend to pieces, but we love him differently. Because of that, we're able to meet different needs for him. Because he's moody he meets different needs for us, but we all fit in the puzzle of life somehow together. I love emotion. I love moods. I love that people have them whether they're happy or sad or angry or confused. To me that is what makes someone human. It's what makes you an individual. The firrst friend had no need for that. There's something else that draws us all to each other.
It's so fucking beautiful in the end.
To my friend who is struggling with the judgment, if ever you should read this and know who you are, know that you are perfect the way you are. I don't need to know who you think you are because to me you're something else entirely and I accept it and think it's wonderful.
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