I'm not mean.

I'm sure most people would say that's a cocky thing to say about myself. After all people aren't allowed to make self-personality assessments unless it's deprecating. Who am I to judge my own self? No one would really say they're mean, would they now? So obviously I shouldn't be allowed to defend myself on this subject matter.

Maybe in the past, I would have agreed with the above opinion. I might have said that other people's opinions of me are what matter as you are who people think you are.

Wanna know how I feel now?

I don't give a flying fuck.

Recently I've been told that I'm mean. It was a patronizing conversation. One that involved the words "I would never want to be a person like you. You're so mean." This wasn't a close friend. It wasn't even someone who can claim to know me well. However, it was a person with whom I deal with daily and it completely broke my heart.

My feelings for this person aside, the fact that he felt comfortable calling me mean angered me. Mostly cause it injured my feelings. If I were truly mean, surely his words wouldn't have affected me, would they? For the next few weeks, I gave him several chances to retract his statements, but he never did.

And I kept caring and I kept feeling bad and I kept apologizing to him in different ways. I figured if he thought I was mean, I must be a bad person, and I kept trying to overcompensate. I bent low and lower. I tried to talk to him many times. And it went nowhere.

Well, that's not exactly true.

It got to a point where I started having a low opinion of myself. I started believing that I was mean. I got frustrated and unhappy and actually became meaner. Which, of course, made matters even worse.

Today I got so fed up and so miserable that I hit my lowest point. And you know what's great about being there? It can't get any worse.

So I took a good look at myself, decided that this guy was full of shit, and started believing in myself again. I know who I am and I know who I am not. I know my weaknesses and I'm open to suggestions on how to fix them, but when it comes to abuse, I'm not your gal.

Not anymore.

Previously? New New Thing.