Reclaiming Myself

After finally logging into blogger again and discovering that someone or some people in Slovenia have been reading my blog, I decided that, hey, I might as well do some kind of post to keep this thing going. Maybe I'll get some post-it notes and stick them to my laptop to remind myself to post regularly. I usually just come home from work, make dinner, and play games until I'm ready to go to sleep. So much for an interesting life.

We went out last night. It was the last show for my co-workers' band 'Moip'. I had gone to all the shows, so of course I would go to this last one. One that was surely going to be some of their finest material.

Around 12 in the afternoon I got a call from him. Breaking up with me.

After a rough break up, I find that it's not very fun to go out to a club and trying to have fun because you just see everybody around you actually having a good time and all you (read: I) are doing is feeling hurt about what happened earlier...you know, the parts where he called you a liar and a bad person and said that he never wanted to speak to you again. Those things hurt. And they also put a damper on what should be a good night.

I wasn't in much of a mood for drinking. I felt that if I really started to drink that I would end up more depressed than I already was. I'm a brooder. And one of my friends called me out on it last night actually:

"I see you as someone who holds on to things internally until they erupt out in some overly dramatic show of emotions. I mean, I've seen you at worse--"
"Yeah, y'all saw me at New Year's."
"Yeah, and, so, from what I see, you're on the path to do that again, but I don't think it'll be as severe this time."

He's got a point, I guess. But more than erupting on New Year's, I collapsed into a sobbing pile of myself in front of a crowd of happy people ready to bring in 2012. I'm determined not to let that happen again, but I'm afraid that, yes, I am on a path to do that again. I let my emotions eat away at me until I am just a fragile remnant of my formerly confident self.

Ha. Confident. That's also a lie. Maybe he's right. Maybe I am a liar. Maybe I'm just the kind of person who manipulates the truth and the people around him to get by in this life. Maybe I actually am the bad person he described me as.

Immediately after the break up I messaged a good friend of mine here in Korea. After talking in her room for a while, I asked the question that was bothering me:

"Am I a bad person?"
"I don't think so."
"OK, but do other people feel that way?"
"I don't know what others think. But to me, you're just someone who's always super real with people."

It gave me some minimal comfort. But I know how my friend can parse her words at times to not be devastating to people. The way I constantly bite my tongue to refrain from the truth. There it is again...that lying person coming out.

I know I'm probably overreacting, but still I wonder about how much of it is true. How many of the things he said to me that I took as hurtful are actually true? I'm sure that people don't like to think of themselves as bad people, but where do we draw the line at the delusion?

Maybe I'm just being my crazy self, over thinking these things to the point where I start to believe they are true. Or maybe I'm finally coming out of my fog and realizing that I'm not a decent person like I have thought. Maybe all the bad and horrible people in the world actually believe that they are good people just trying to make it in this life. Where does that leave me? Am I on the side of those who are good, or those who deceive themselves into believing that their intentions are actually beneficial?

"At least," I told another friend as I glanced over at the bartender that night, "I'm free to look again."

She turned to me and I leaned her head up so she could yell in my ear over the music, "Heck yeah, you are!"