by Marlena Elias
October 7, 2000
As I reflect on my time here in Texas, one absolute truth comes to mind. Since I've been here I've become a very negative person. Let me restate that, since I've been in Texas the negative side of my personality has come to the surface. Previous to the move, it has never been advantageous to let this negative energy out.
In the past 16 months I have gone through such emotional turmoil that I was under the impression I had ADD, so I tried Ritalin. The side affect of Ritalin caused the people I work with to come up to me and ask what was wrong because I had this scowl on my face. I did notice that while on Ritalin, I had lost some of my "politeness barrier"; the ability to stop before saying something rude. I'm not talking Tourette's syndrome rude, but not the same sunny disposition. Ritalin proved to be making me so negative and angry that even I couldn't stand it, so I tried another drug, Adderall. Unfortunately I had the same side effect, and in fact, one of my fears that I shared with Ethan and Jeanne was: What if I'm really not a nice person? What if I've been faking it for 37 years?
Since this negative side has surfaced and has stayed near the top of my personality, I have come to a better understanding of my surroundings and myself. Age, time in life, physical location, family, friends, career, have all contributed to why being "pleasant" was so important. Now I can see what I have been doing to myself and can now work toward a happy medium. Being funny and fun for the people around me, all the time, pretty much caused my rather unsavory emotions to get buried. From an early age, anger was never rewarded, so I rarely got upset. As I got older, the reward became so much more obvious and more desirable that the payoff was too good to be anything other than happy. It's only now that I realize the price I paid for not being true to myself.
Having never spoken up for myself, or expressed my feelings, any previous attempts were met with such shock that I kept pushing down the feelings. Having no practice or natural ability to communicate all of my feelings (in a civilized manner), it's no wonder that most people can't accept that I can get angry or be something other than sunshine and happiness. Such pressure. All my life when I've attempted to communicate unhappiness, it's always been met with such disdain and condescension that I never learned to deal with the feelings. Now, I'm like an emotionally retarded adult needing special education classes. Deep down inside, I still feel like the good person I know I am. What I realize now is that I wasn't "faking it" for 37 years, but in fact denied that I had more than one personality trait.
So here I am at 38, finally seeing and feeling my way to 40. Grateful every day that I have been given the chance to understand my emotional "short comings" and grow from the knowledge. I am also lucky to have Ethan and Jeanne to provide some navigation when I totally lose my way. If there was any way to express how hopeful I feel right now that I have this understanding of myself, I would spontaneously combust with joy. Exploding would defeat the purpose of all this mental effort, so for now I'll just revel in the knowledge that I can be myself. Revel also in the knowledge that this path of negative/sour thinking is only temporary and is necessary to living a truer, happier life.
Amen. <EM>
