Ya gotta knock that shit off

Teri and I were talking about catching flies with honey today on the way out of class. "I'm just puttin' honey out to catch some flies" she shrugged, in response to a particularly snippy remark I cuffed about an experience we had in class today.

"I don't care. I don't want to catch flies." I harrumphed.

"Well, all you'll end up with then is vinegar" she teased back.

And she's right.

Teri is often my "reality checker." Her reactions to things that make me SUPER mad help me know if I have a right to be SUPER MAD or if I'm overreacting a smidge. (Usually, I'm overreacting more than a smidge, whatever unit of measurement a "smidge" might be.) She kindly pokes fun at me while laughing, and tries to get me to laugh too, until I see how silly I'm being. Or I don't laugh, and I don't agree. She will smile and shrug and let it sit on me until later, when I bring it up again and point out that I was being silly.

Today is going to be one of those times, when I am going to text her later and tell her that she was right, that catching flies with honey in this instance is the smarter and easier way to go, that I don't need to be making my life harder just for shits and giggles.

Sometimes, though, I don't want to catch flies with honey. It's childish, and stubborn, and completely not helpful to me as a business owner, boss, student, wife or friend. I know that. I am curious about people, I want to know why they are motivated in a specific direction, I want to know how their particular ego or drive or ambition or motivation surfaced. But the reality of dealing with my chemical disorder is that sometimes I can't take that information and use it like I should, to make connections or empathy or forge a bridge of understanding even in my own cerebellum to make my life easier. Sometimes, when I find out the impetus or motivation for someone's action that I don't understand, it just makes me angry or annoyed or irritated and I am unwilling to extend the part of myself that says "Ok, I recognize you as another human creature with foibles and experiences that make you unique."

This also extends to myself. Sometimes, I just get so TIRED of my own brain. For example, yesterday, while hanging up my coat, I happened to look into the mirror on our coat bench and said aloud "wow, I'm just going to stop looking at myself in mirrors from now on." I knew that saying it wasn't going to do anything good for me. I knew that when John heard me, he was just going to get annoyed at me. Today is a perfect example of my lack of patience not wanting to let me understand others, or catch myself a fucking break.

I am not as good at speaking or writing Spanish as I could be, but I know that a great deal of that comes from confidence. I do the work, I practice speaking and reading outside of my class assignments, but not as much as I could be. I have NO confidence in my proofreading abilities for other students in the class. Today we did a group correction exercise for the essays we wrote last week, and I was so terrified, I gave myself a mini anxiety attack while we were correcting our papers. Instead of just calming down and realizing that CLASS is where I LEARN how to do things, I spent a good deal of time being irritated at the prof for being unclear and not explaining to us how he wanted us to work our groups in peer editing when he had us exchange our papers (almost as an afterthought) last flippin' Thursday. This wasn't helpful. Teri and I exchanged a few glances while he basically inferred that we were all morons for not being able to take his afterthought of an instruction AFTER class was already supposed to be over, but she shrugged it off while I fumed. I KNOW that I know more than I give myself credit for, and I know that I will not learn more unless I have some humilty, realize that I'm not SUPPOSED to know how to do this right now, and just suck it up and ask for help. But instead, I got mad. I panicked all class period and got super angry instead of breathing, saying "well, guess I learned something today" and walking out of class with a greater understanding.

I decided on the way home, while thinking over what I did in school today, that I need a little Jilly on my shoulder. Have you met my friend Jilly? I know that most of my usual 4 readers have. Jilly often tells me when I am being too hard on myself, and when I'm not being hard enough. In my head, on the way home, I could hear her saying to me "Steph, ya gotta KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF when all you're doing is telling yourself how much you suck."

So, for the rest of the day, when I say something mean to myself, even just in my head, I'm going to imagine my inner Jilly saying "ya gotta knock that shit off" and try to stop tearing myself to shreds every day for the the things I am still learning or the things I can't control, or the things I can control and haven't lately.

Speaking of, I'm going to stop blogging and start payroll.