Me, Myself, and I (need a fucking break...)

Since I've been here (here being R-MWC), I've been asked by my various friends to update my livejournal. Well, I wondered what I should say that would be profound and something that they haven't heard yet. I mean, do they really need to relearn about my course changes and scheduling issues and loan problems? No, not really. Most of the people that care I talk to everyday. And it occured to me while I was laying in bed with a vicious headache that most of them don't really know my philosophy on life and what I think about people in generally.

What I think about people, in general, is actually not very nice, pretty, or sugar coated. Now, I'm not thinking of a specific person or persons when I say this, but my idea of people and humanity on the whole. I first formed this idea when I lived in Fort Belvoir, a military base in Northern Viriginia. We had just moved there from Pennsylvania where we were staying with my mother's parents for a few months after we left New York. Fort Belvoir was not a good place to live. My fther was the highest ranking officer in the neighborhood, so my brothers and I were picked on a lot. Teased, ignored, slandered, and just all around fucked over by our peers.

If any of you who know me now knew me then, you probably wouldn't recognize me at all. I used to be a very different person, very outgoing, gregarious, and happy. A little reserved perhaps, but that just happens when you move around all the time. I was a lover of the outdoors, of sports, and of people. I used to have actual ideals about humanity in general. Hah. I'm none of those things anymore. Any of them. They were beaten out of me when I lived in Fort Belvoir, literally, emotionally, and almost physically. And at this hellhole is when I formed all of my opions about people in general.

1. People are not to be trusted in any way, shape or form. There will always be someone to fuck you over in the end. And that someone will most likely be your closest "friend" and/or confidant. This was the hardest lesson for me to learn, for I used to be a very trusting soul. I was always taught that people were trustworthy and all that rot. No. They're not, most of them don't even come close. Whether it is telling the truth or lieing or being scheming sons of bitches, they're not trustworthy. You can't put an ounce of trust in anything they say, do, or say they do becuase you'll never know. You never know when you run into that one person who made some kid's life hell back in the grade school years. About the only people you could trust were priests and nuns (or various other religious types). But suddenly, they couldn't be trusted anymore. Suddenly there's priests touching little boys in the "briefs" area. No, people are not to be trusted.

2. In the end, all people want to do is use you for something. This should have been an easy lesson to learn, but oddly enough, it wasn't. Or more acurrately, it was learned, but never heeded, really. And it is something I still struggle with today. I tend to give way more of myself than is strictly necessary to my friends. It's my way of showing my trust to those people I deign to know something about them. I also tend to give and give and give and never receive anything in return. Any fucking thing. And I know some people are reading this thinking, "It's a friendship, it'll come back to you in the end." Yeah, fucking, right. This happened far more in high school than it does now, but I still do it now. Last semester (hell, last year) was a stunning example of this. God.

3. People tend towards the cruel. Whether it's by "accident" or not, they have the tendency to turn into this horrible monsters that no one really likes. I'm not excluding myself out of this rule either. Children are quite possibly some of the cruelest creatures on the face of this planet, and what's so cruel about it is it's either completely thoughtless or meticulously planned to hurt or kill. It stands to reason that I harbor an intense disliking for anyone over the age of a year and under the age of 18. But cruelty still runs rampant in everyone, whether they realize it or not. Thoughtless cruelty is one of the worst offences a person can make in my book. Snapping at people without thinking about what you're saying...those are the ones can cut the deepest.

4. Well there was a fourth point but I can't think of it at the moment.

Ok, so you've learned what I learned about people in general. Now imagine that you learned this when you were about six or seven. Before fourth grade. Hell, I wasn't even thinking about puberty at this point. I've learned that angst about the world and people and "why the hell don't they like me?" tends to be a teenage thing. I went through all of that before I was ten. Now, admittedly, my view of the world and people has changed over time, but not by much. I'm no more trusting of strangers now than I was before. I'm still a very hard person to get to know (much less like...), in fact as I get older, the harder it gets.

Gah, now this really does sound like teenage angst. Oh well.I never said that my mind was pretty.

On the subject of my last post...

ghanimachan asked a rather difficult question in her reply to my last post, said question being "Do you consider us trustworthy?" I've been thinking it over all day and now I've finally formed an answer of sorts.

The first thing I'm going to tackle is the word "us." Her definition of "us" and my definition of "us" is almost undoubtably two completely different things. Mostly, I have absolutely no idea what she means when she says "us." So ghanimachan, I'm sadly going to ignore the word "us" and replace it with "me" and use you as an example on how I determine people to be trustworthy (for the most part, there are a few rare exceptions that this just doesn't happen for whatever reason).

First let me say, yes, I do consider you to be trustworthy, at least now I do. When I first meet you I had my doubts about that. What made me decide you were ultimately trustworthy was because noellesan thought you were trustworthy. Odd, isn't it? I was better friends with her, and when she was OK with you, I decided that I could be too. Does that make any sense? I tend to base my opinions of people on the opinions of my friends. Makes me sound rather co-dependent, doesn't it? Oh well, it's just the way that I've learned to be more sure of people when I get to know them.

Now, I don't do this all the time, because if I did life would be too simple, I guess. Sometimes it works out for the better and sometimes it doesn't. A good example of it working for the better is when I became friends with karweenie. When I first met her (holy cow, was it really a year ago?!? Gaaah!), I immediately thought, now there's someone I can be friends with. (This instinct doesn't work all the time either, but instead of besmirching someone's name, I'm not going to mention it.)

I hope you do write an entry on your childhood! I would love to know! Whee! And yes, I do know you love me, and I you. ^___^ Brandy ga sukiiiii!

noellesan Yeah, it *is* sad, but at least we have more common ground! ^_^

And last but not least, Denise: Yes, I totally agree with you. And I'm grateful for all of the friends that I've made here, because we all do come from different backgrounds and yet we have some point in common that makes it possible to be friends.

Ugh. My brain is fried. I've been thinking about this too much today. I think I'll stop now.