Where Are My Manners?

Someday soon, I am going to have to make a change. This reality is setting in and I don't know how I feel about it. Nothing feels entirely real and the older I get, I start to feel more and more disconnected. Why do you think that is?

A dialogue runs through my mind, more and more lately. "It doesn't matter. You don't matter." I say this a lot... or rather, I find myself saying it a lot. It isn't something that I am proud of or even something that I mean. It is what works to get my mouth to just stop. If I don't matter and the thing that I am upset with doesn't really matter... what is there left to say about anything?

What do you say when you have nothing nice to say but you need to get it out anyway?

It isn't like you can have someone else speak on your behalf and say the things that you feel that need to be said... but only nicer. Nope. It simply doesn't work that way.

Ultimately, we all have to learn to speak but we also need to do so in a manner that we can each understand.

Recently, I have been running into issues about speaking with people. I mean, I can't really seem to get my point across... like ever. I don't know what it is that I am doing wrong that this keeps happening but most of my closest friends aren't talking to me. I have to say, partially... I have let a lot slip lately. I have found that I used to have a major anger problem. Swinging back around to a more passive person has in many ways made me feel like a pushover. Then I get resentful and I explode.

I am aware the simplest way to rectify this is to work on speaking up earlier and not allowing others to goad me like this. I also need to take personal responsibility.

I Know It Isn't All Me

Sometimes, I have this inflated sense of self... and I know that I am pretty great. I think positive thoughts about me and I even have been known to indulge in selfie-taking as well as primping and making myself all dolled up. I certainly don't hate me and I think that I deserve to be treated with decency.

So, why am I slipping?

I am allowing people to treat me a certain way, all for the sake of being right. All for the sake for them to prove to me that they can be mean and then to force their hand to work on them. It is like putting myself on the chopping block, hoping and betting that the other person will save me.

Then I look around and I see other women my age, doing the exact. same. thing.

Where did we learn this?

Then I look at the next generation. I see a breeding of certain behaviors into the next gen, the millenials.

It is like in one generation we have gone from frigid to fragile and it all happened in the blink of an eye.

Chicks before Dicks

Much like Bros Before Hoes there is a saying for women to stick together. But, I think we have a huge disconnect. Women are bred to behave in the manner that they have adapted to. When a girl is born she is all but labeled as healthy, pretty and good. As her toddler years approach her personality is set in and the trauma of often simply living is enough to develop a daddy complex. In our world, where parents are less and less capable or willing to involved, technology and society begin to raise our kids.

All This Worry About Leaving the Planet For the Next Gen

Did we bother to stop and think about the kids that were planting for the future? Did we bother to stop and think about the sensitivities of the Gen X generation and how that would lead to incomplete adults later down the line? It is as though we are in this time where information is exploding and we have these little primitive brains to keep up.

It makes me genuinely concerned for the next generation.

Then I shrug...

"No matter, I'll be done by then."