Day Seven-- Confrontation

A lot of things have been happening in my life recently that have caused me to do something I’m not very accustomed of doing.  I come from a family that is very passive aggressive about their anger.  Instead of talking about things that made us upset, we simply put it away, locked it in a box, and carried it around with us.

Your family teaches how you deal with emotions and that can be both a good and a bad thing.  Fortunately, my family didn’t have to deal with anger very often.  I had a very happy childhood with no major problems other than some bad grades I got in middle school.  It wasn’t until after I left for college when I really started to notice the frustration my family caused in my life when they didn’t talk to about why they were upset with me.  I guess it was because I could better understand what was going on and get that they were frustrated with me because of something I said or did. 

In college, I started to make friends with someone who would grow into being my most fierce and fabulous best friend and he began to instill within me a trait that I’m only now starting to truly understand and implement in my life.

Confrontation.

Seriously, why don’t people do this more?  So many people go about their every day lives, carrying around sadness, anger, fear, frustration-- all of this negative energy that keeps them from being truly happy.

And since I am trying to be happy, I’ve been confronting a lot of people in my life about the things they have done to me that made me upset.  These are recent things, I’m letting the past be the past, but it feels so cathartic to actually tell someone how I feel.  And the best part is, I’m not being emotional about it.  I’m not crying or angry or whatever towards them, I just articulate what I feel and through talking about what was bothering me the situations have gotten a billion times better.  And billions are balllllin.

All and all, I’m learning that the best way to figure out who I am is to not be ashamed of who that woman is.  And that woman is learning that confrontation is where it’s at…Seriously.