I used to have an acquaintance in my life that I would see regularly, and after interactions with this person, I would spiral for two days replaying the words exchanged in my head. For the purpose of this post, I’ll just call him Angry Acquaintance, for now.
Angry Acquaintance had a certain way of saying things that would consistently challenge me. Most of the time they were words said passive aggressively, that successfully made me feel; stupid, I did not belong, or that I was not one of the ‘cool kids’. In my interactions with Angry Acquaintance, he would sometimes challenge my choices and beliefs in an unkind manner because he just didn’t agree.
After these conversations, I would spend days mentally strategizing a snappy and scathing comeback, successfully putting him in his place, if I had the chance to get into the way-back time machine. On my mental journey to nowhere’s-ville, my brain would start with, “Oooh, what a jerk”, and my inner judgy-judgerson would take my side, and rightfully so. Angry Acquaintance was actually, a self-professed jerk, and I was just agreeing with him, right?
Not really.
I heard this old adage: “If everywhere you go, there’s a jerk, maybe you’re the jerk.”
And that was my orphan epiphany, when I started to realize that Angry Acquaintance was not the only one that was angry.
In my orphan core, I already believed that I was stupid, I did not belong and that I was not one of the ‘cool kids’. Angry Acquaintance was, in fact, unkind to me, but he was not responsible for the layers that already existed in my orphan heart, I was. When I realized this, I could stop blaming my sad interactions solely on Angry Acquaintance, realizing I was responsible for my own heart.
Now, I’ll just use the time machine to stop calling him “Angry Acquaintance”. (Sorry, man.)
So, like a TV commercial tagline, I (sometimes) often have to ask myself, “What’s in your core?”