Let’s Be Honest

In the past few years, I’ve noticed that many people have a problem being honest with themselves. And I understand why that can be hard. The truth isn’t usually nice.

And that’s why you need to be honest with yourself before it’s too late. Otherwise you’ll just have too much baggage to unpack, and very few people are willing to flog themselves over decades of poor judgment or bad behavior. They prefer to take it out on everyone else  (I am one of their personal favorites).

This is not to be confused with being honest about other people. These two types of honesty have very little to do with each other, although they might be inversely related. To paraphrase a line of Agatha Christie’s, people who are brutally honest with others are usually delusional about themselves. They have to be. To criticize others harshly, you have to consider yourself qualified to judge them.

The great (haha) thing about being alone is that it teaches you about yourself. It’s unpleasant, but in the spirit being honest, I will share a few of my findings.

First of all, I need to stop stalking people. They’re beginning to notice.

Not really, that was a joke, but only because I have a few good friends who have forbidden me from my creeper ways. (I have some other good friends who recommend TV shows to me like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and remark on its resemblance to my life. These friends are what you call enablers.) The problem is less that stalking creeps people out, but that it doesn’t creep some people out, and you should avoid these people. Which is really the opposite of stalking them.

Stalking has never gotten me anywhere worth going, especially when it comes to people my own age. When I was younger and I stalked people inappropriately older, it was a fun diversion that never lead to anything but moping over unrequited feelings. Alas, none of my teachers ever loved me back. They did, however, stop answering my emails. Even the college professor I once tried to woo, who was single and only a measly 8 years older than me, purposely did not say hello to me outside of class. I gave a long presentation in class to impress him, around twice the length it was supposed to be, and as a result he made signs saying “Five minutes left” and “Stop” that he used in subsequent lessons. As you may have surmised, we are not currently married.

If you stalk, pursue, chase or whatever someone and you get them, you’re always going to be in the position you started out in. And it’s not nice to continually reach for someone. It doesn’t pay off, and it should never be necessary in the first place. There are people in the world who will like you even if you don’t memorize their schedule and write it down in code on your binder. And you don’t want the sort of person who finds that kind of thing endearing anyway (although in my experience, no one does).

So I’m giving it up. No more stalking. At least not very much. It’s a little hard to stop completely when you have a related character flaw: joy in obsession. I like to obsess about people. I like to daydream about them, then listen to sad music and weep into a tissue. On a productive day, I may even write a poem. I used to think it meant something. This was my second epiphany: we (if you’re like me) look for people to play out the fantasies in our head with. The person is less important than the fantasy. Which is fine as long as you know it doesn’t mean anything. 

It’s very easy to forget that, and when I inevitably do, I will remind myself of the product of this soul-searching: not to act on anything I think or feel. I don’t think this is going to go well. If you’re here because I accidentally liked one of your photos from 5 years ago, I’m sorry.