Dear, guys – welcome back to “Letters From Liz“!
Let’s cut right to the chase: we all have assumptions about everything in life. We think we know this, we think we know that, and sometimes, we take the assumptions about ourselves and take them to heart. I am guilty of doing so.
For the sake of my privacy, I’ve recently gone through something in my life that has made me think of the assumptions made about me and how I handle them when in a discussion. Let’s face it: I know I’m not perfect, but the self-judgment side that likes to take over my mind at times wants me to be perfect. So, when assumptions are made towards me, I read them as judgments, and quite frankly – my soul gets hurt. I can sit here and blame it on my anxiety, but the truth is it is about my anxiety, and that’s an aspect of it I need to learn how to control and think more logically about.
Nobody likes when someone looks at them in a way that’s simply not true. The loudest person in the room could be assumed as being the strongest person in the room, not realizing that same person could also be the weakest and self-conscious in the room. The person who has permanent “resting bitch face” could be assumed as being a bitch, not realizing that same person is nice, honest, and a real ass friend. I’m talking about you, Tori! Assumptions are honestly just opinions that people make about other people based on what they see, not what’s really there.
I know people assume me probably as being selfish, because I talk a lot my anxiety and how it makes me function. I know I’m probably looked at as being not caring enough, not interesting enough, just “another fat girl trying to push her twisted views on life just because she can’t handle the fact that she’s wrong.”
Hell, maybe I am those things, but they are only assumptions from other people who don’t live my shoes 24/7. And that’s what we need to note whenever we hear assumptions made about ourselves. Some assumptions are made solely based upon how you may appear as on the internet, and some of them will be made based on how well people know you and how much do they understand about you. At the end of the day, I don’t care what a random person has to assume about me, but if someone I’m close to makes an assumption about me, I know I’m taking it to heart.
But even with the closest people to you, they still don’t know what goes on in your own body and own mind. Even families don’t fully understand why someone is the way they are, and they’re the people in your life should know you best! Know that assumptions are only made because gaps of the story or pieces of the puzzle are missing. Instead of believing everything people assume about you, step back and ask yourself: “what is it about me that makes them assume such things about me? Maybe I could communicate the fact that I’m this instead of that.” At the end of the day. don’t allow other people define you or try to assume something about you because no one knows you better than you know yourself.
And despite me swallowing the hard pill of me being defensive when assumptions are made about me, I have to learn that words are just words, and words do not hurt me.
I also have to remember that I am a working progress. In a world of simulacrums and blurred lines, remember that you can only be who you are, and who you are is not perfect. Maybe I have to sit myself down and tell myself, “girl, stop trying to be perfect when you know you can’t ever be!”, but it’s something important to remind yourself so that you don’t take assumptions as judgements all the time.
Espeically the hypersensitive ones out there, like me.
Letters From Liz. 