Anita

As you may have gathered from all of my posts here on TinyBuddha, I do have a strong inclination to perceive things in extreme black and white terms. There is no grey area in between as far as I’m concerned, people are either nice people or they are arseholes. Yes, maybe that is why the coworker behaved the way he did. Yes, those are his attitudes and beliefs regarding masculinity and liking sports. Yes, there is a strong generation gap and a strong contrast in beliefs and attitudes. While I strongly disagree with his views because I found that comment really insulting and blatantly sexist, he is still entitled to that opinion. I don’t regard myself as being “a normal blokey bloke”. I don’t do “normal bloke” things like watching football or playing sports or going nightclubbing. The other coworkers had those kinds of interests, but they didn’t seem to have a problem that I prefer reading, painting, that I used to have green hair or that I’m a volunteer librarian.

The other co-workers did invite me out to go for beer with them – it made me feel nervous about going because I had nothing in common with them and I kept wondering if they were just going to be like the person in my dream. For the first time in 7 years or so I felt like Carrie again, nervous that “they’re all gonna laugh at you”. The plans fell through in the end so we didn’t go but I just kept thinking “What if they just told me the whole thing was off and then just decided to sneak and go out without me because they really don’t like me?”

I’m strongly inclined to stick up for myself. I don’t suffer fools anymore. It’s a strong reaction from all the self-reflection over the past two years of me posting on this forum. Learning a lot about self-respect. Unlearning a lot of what I was taught about “just ignoring it”, being polite to everybody and putting myself last. Some people you just can’t win with logic or politeness, they will just persist with their passive aggressiveness until you have to be brutally honest with them and tell them to back off. I’m under no obligation to please everybody and I am not responsible to how they react, but I know that if I take a dislike to a person, I don’t want to know that person and I need to make them stay away from me. The brutal honesty approach may make things extremely awkward and uncomfortable for those present but it works, I have to go for the shock factor sometimes.

Joe