I read some of my old blog posts last night and cringe~~~ I don’t think I had the capacity to think deeply back then or maybe I just didn’t want to. The posts were very “on the surface”, describing daily happenings. This happened first, then this happened next. I caught myself saying in a few posts that I’m generally a positive and happy person. Hmmm…over the years, I’ve discovered that that’s not exactly true. Perhaps I didn’t understand then how people could be scary and vicious. I probably also didn’t understand then that there are many grey areas to lots of topics and sometimes we will never reach an absolute answer to them.
I know I seem to be telling people to be more confident of themselves, but I’m often melancholic in my posts here, letting out how I truly feel about myself. It’s true…I lack confidence in many areas when it comes to myself. Like why can’t I tell myself the same things I tell others. I don’t know. Maybe when I tell others all the positive stuff, it acts as a reminder to myself too.
One thing’s for sure…
In my teens to 20s, I was all gung-ho and ready to “fight” anyone who would argue with me. If people left an unkind message, I wouldn’t hesitate to fight back. I wanted to have the last word in every fight. As a result, I was also deeply wounded when friendships turned sour. I couldn’t understand how people could be so two-faced. I mean, isn’t it tiring to act nice on the surface, but actually you hate the guts out of the person you’re talking to? Isn’t it tiring to always be plotting how to bring down others? I was particularly wounded from an incident that happened in my late teens and sought to talk about it. A friend told me that people will come and go in your life. Perhaps not everyone is fated to stay as a friend till the end of time. Her words didn’t quite sink in then.
In my 30s, I started to make peace with myself. I became less gung-ho perhaps coz my time and focus was shifted to my family. I became a mum and there was so much to learn and struggle with that I didn’t have time to think about other (frivolous) things. I might still want to fight back, but basically I saw it as wasting my time when I had to do a million other things for my kids.
Now that I’m in my early 40s, I have learnt that you will not be everyone’s cup of tea and vice versa. My friend’s words then make so much more sense now. There can be many whys in the world and not everything has an absolute answer to it. And you know what? I’m ok with that. People can say unkind things to me, but I choose to ignore. Not coz I admit defeat, but I will choose which battles are worth fighting. Not every battle needs to be fought. Simply put, everyone has a mouth to say what they want and it’s not something I have control over. Haters also gonna hate, so really…whatever lah. The online keyboard warriors can say all the stuff they want, I don’t even know who these people are so why bother fighting them at all? At the end of the day, they are just cowards hiding behind anonymity. I shall focus on the people I care about, the ones who love me and whom I love. Those are the people worth my time and effort.
Hahaha…but if there’s a battle worth fighting (e.g. you hurt my loved ones), I will definitely fight back. Don’t make me unleash my inner ah lian and f you upside down. I WILL MAKE SURE YOU GO DOWN.
