Gym time today: 2 hours.
Total this week: 12.5 hours.

Pilates Fit and Turbo Kick today. My abs actually felt kind of sore by the end of it, but it's not noticeable now.

At the moment I'm listening to this and trying to just focus entirely on the music.


I've been in my head too much lately and I need to step out of that a little, I think. Considering (again) shedding people from my life. I talked a little to my friend Mike (not Fro's boyfriend) about it. He said he doesn't like the idea of burning bridges with people, because you're essentially giving up on them and suggesting that you don't believe they can change. I agree with him, but with some of these people, maybe I should just give up on them. I believe that everyone is capable of positive change, but there are some people who just don't want to, and there's not much you can do to change their minds.

The domestic violence agency I used to intern at shared a link on Facebook, and although I've never been physically abused, I felt like I could relate to some of the elements in this story:

‘I Believed I Could Love The Abuse Out Of Him’

I thought if I were a good enough girlfriend — if I just loved him enough — he wouldn’t want to hurt me again.

I guess this is something I've (mistakenly?) thought in general about people. "If I'm just a good enough person, people won't want to hurt me!" The problem, I suppose, is that wanting to hurt someone and actually hurting them don't always go hand in hand. The idealistic part of me (which has been withering away for a few years now) wants to think that if I'm just good enough, people will want to not hurt me. There's a slight distinction between that and not wanting to hurt someone.

If you don't want to hurt someone, you don't have an active desire to hurt them.
If you want to not hurt someone, you have an active desire to avoid doing things that might hurt them.

A fine line, maybe, but I feel like the difference is still enough that it's worth noting. In the latter category, I think people would be more motivated to check their behavior for things that could have a negative effect on others. In the former category, it's like, "well, I'm not going to put energy into hurting you, but if it happens anyway... whoops! Accidents happen!"

---

Yesterday night my mom knocked on my door and asked, in a rather aggressive tone, why I hadn't thrown away some goat cheese on the counter that we'd discovered was moldy earlier in the evening. I told her I didn't know what I was supposed to. She immediately got defensive and said "Well who did you think was going to do it?" I could tell, based on more past interactions than I'd ever care to count, that she was implying that I expected her to do it. I told her that that's not what I was saying, and my point was that I did not know I was supposed to dispose of it. She didn't understand me and angrily asked again who else I thought was going to throw it out. I had to repeat myself numerous times and explain that my point (I didn't know I was expected to throw this out) was different than what she thought I was saying (I expected you to throw this out). I told her I didn't think it was a reasonable assumption that I would just know it was up to me to throw out the moldy food, and she started going on a rant about how I was the one who realized it was moldy, and she had left to do some work at her school, so I shouldn't have thought she would do it, and how I shouldn't have just left the goat cheese on the counter for "someone else" (her) to clean up.

I've been through this conversation (is it even really a conversation?) so many times and really didn't want to go through it again. Eventually though, I told her that I thought a better approach on her side would have been to ask me to clean it up instead of demanding to know why I hadn't cleaned it up already. I'm still not sure she actually understood what my original point was, but at least she accepted the alternative course of action I suggested.

If/when I have my own kids, I am going to avoid repeating my mom's behavior as much as I possibly can. Having lived with this all my life though, I'm honestly surprised I don't get defensive way more than I do. I know I used to, but I've been working on not doing that for a few years now. My mom acts like a lot of things are attacks or demands directed at her, and she reacts with hostility and aggression. It's only in recent years that I started to notice this so clearly. She's also a really bad listener, although I knew that before. I think my dad might be a better listener, but I haven't had as much close contact with him as I have with my mom.

I was talking to my therapist about how I don't feel like I've really had any positive role models in my life (or any role models...?). People I admire, sure, but not people I look up to consistently as people to model my own behavior after. I just construct an image in my head of what ideal behavior looks like and try to follow that, instead of having someone I can actually watch. This is normal to me, but my therapist's reaction made me feel like it's not supposed to be normal. Maybe this factors into why I'm not in the habit of asking people questions about how to do things, though. I might just have a deeply ingrained belief that nobody has answers for me and I have to figure things out on my own.

I always hear people say that they will be nothing like one or both of their parents when they have kids. however, it always seems you become more like your parent(s) than you expect. at least, that's what I've seen.
» thaitanic on 2016-02-12 12:23:02

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