let go

As I've established before, I find New Year's resolutions to be arbitrary in the way that they are attached to a specific day that only comes once a year. Also, I think growth shouldn't be dependent on whether or not you wrote it as a goal on some list you maybe taped to your refrigerator for a couple weeks in early January.

Well, despite ignoring the call to action on January first, there are things I've been working on. Or rather, things I've been aware of that I need to change and that I am in the process of addressing.

Area the first:
Comparisons. I understand that people compare themselves to other people, and that it's essentially built in to being human, but I've been trying to do it less. I grew up in dance, where you literally cannot go a single day without comparing yourself to someone else in some way (talent, body type, prettiness, flexibility, etc). For years, my only images of myself were what I saw in the mirror and how I lacked where other people did not. It wasn't until this year that I finally started trying to really force myself out of this mindset. Any time anyone is praised for writing, I feel inadequate. Any time someone succeeds in theatre, I am confident that I will never make it. Like what the heck, other people's success is not synonymous with my downfall. It's a weird concept to me, and it's weird that it's a weird concept to me. I don't know how to quantifiably judge myself as a person any more. But I'm trying. I'm bad at it, but I'm working on it. I'm not there yet, but I'm going to keep going until something changes.

Area the second:
Just-World Fallacy.(JWF) This is the is a cognitive bias wherein someone feels essentially that the things that happen to people are deserved. Good people should get good consequences, and bad people should get bad consequences in life. Karma, essentially. And it's not that I have it because I understand fully that life does whatever the frick it wants regardless of the kind of person you are, but there are elements of it that definitely sneak their way into my thoughts. And it makes me bitter, I think. I've been trying to take the emotions and distance myself from them so I can observe them under glass rather than through flesh, and I think there is just enough JWF in me to build resentments towards other people. A specific instance, and I apologise for referencing an event that occurred months ago, but the situation discussed in my post "sucker punch". Yeah, sorry about that. I swear I'll move on eventually.

But it's not even that I haven't moved on. I'm nice to her, I talk to her, I accept that she is a fully intelligent human being who has loads of emotions and reasons for doing things that I will never fully understand. I've accepted that, and it's fine. And I dunno what I was thinking really, but I guess JWF got me feeling that because I've been actively a good person toward her that I deserve some sort of reciprocal actions or something. She ignores me unless I specifically address her, and I can tell that she still finds me annoying and wouldn't mind if I were to leave the country or something. I'm sure there's more going on than that, but that's what I've picked up on. But that's not that that I really want to talk about. It's that I'm bitter about other people liking her. Jumping back to my issue with comparisons, I know logically that people liking her doesn't affect me in literally any way, but it feels unfair. Like, when teachers whom I know knew what happened back in February have her as their favourites or congratulate her on things and whatever. And that's good, I know it is. I'm glad that she isn't being treated differently for something that happened months ago, but goodness it hurts. For no apparent reason. 90% of me has moved on, but 10% of me is determined to continue disliking her and wants her to not be successful or liked by anyone or to get accepted into the colleges she wants or to find anyone really neat to marry and have a good life with or anything.

And that is not fair of me. If she works for things, she should get them. If she wants to not speak with me, that's fine, that's her decision. I don't know. I'm trying to let go. It's hard because there is this bitterness planted so deeply inside of me I'm having trouble even locating it to begin with. It's hard because I have basically no anger or bitterness in most other areas of my life, so I feel somewhat justified in harbouring this one tiny thing. It's hard because I know I need to just let it go and move on with my life but I don't want to let it go I don't want to let it go I don't want to let it go I can't seem to let it go because people are acting like nothing ever happened and like she has been completely justified in everything she has ever done, but that encounter ruined me. I mean, it tore me apart in ways I didn't even know were possible, and I'm still suffering from the residue of it that I haven't managed to scrape out of my mind yet. But it's fine. I'm learning to accept it. I'm trying to move on. I'm trying to let go.