I Can Do Most Anything

I have a really annoying defensiveness about me. “No shit”, you say.

I have no problem acknowledging this defensiveness. It’s been a part of me for as long as I can remember, and I have no doubt that it served a useful purpose. It might even still, but I no longer want anything to do with it. This is undoubtedly the kind of thing that takes years of therapy to undo, but I can do most anything, so I’ll do it here. The universe is my creation and anyway, I don’t have the time or money for therapy, and if I did I’m too stingy with both.

I didn’t really care too much until recently about this. I sort of figured that anyone who got to know me would figure out when to ignore my defensiveness, enough people have. Occasionally someone will think I’m being defensive when I’m just being self deprecating, and I have to explain. I have to tell them the truth, and the truth is that you will know if I’m really hurt because that’s when I really say something nasty in return. Most of the time I’m just acting defensive though.

And then recently, I decided this was not good enough.

And then a couple of weeks later, I decided again.

This is what you call negative reinforcement I think.

Nothing really remarkable happened that led me to this realization, I just didn’t like the way I reacted to people in a couple of instances. I was stupid; my assumptions were ridiculously clouded by my own defensiveness. My own flaws were just so apparent, that it would be a shame to not take advantage of this opportunity to change. More importantly, I realized I no longer needed this particular characteristic.