Am I being followed?!?

A friend of mine told me yesterday that I have a "persecution complex." I have been going over and over it in my mind and feeling really sad about this. "Persecution complex" is just a nicer way of saying, "It's all about me complex," and what hurts is that there is probably some validity to it. The context of the situation is that in the last couple of weeks I was very, very briefly involved with a kid that hangs out at my favorite neighborhood bar - a place, I might add, where I spend a great deal of time. Unfortunately, so does he. I hadn't heard from him and awkwardly ran into him last week at the bar. I tried to be genial and make conversation as a way to alleviate the weirdness. Not only had he not called me back (which was fine b/c the guy, to put it delicately, was as good as the weird, brown wrinkled fry you find inbetween the car seat and the floor months after your Happy Meal) but he was acting embarrassed and almost ashamed. How humiliating! He had walked by me in the bar, clearly had seen me, and told me later he hadn't. Awful! Not only did I make a poor choice by hooking up with this douchebag in the first place, I had to continue to see him and watch him act like I was some leper troll. So the other night, he came up to my friend and I asking after another regular we know. I answered but was curt, I mean, wtf. I don't really feel like I need to converse, and yet my curt behavior made me feel guilty. I hate that! I am finally being better about making clean cuts when something isn't good, he dicks around like a coward, and I feel GUILTY about not being nicer.

Now, I'm a grown woman and in no way am I evading responsibility. I made those choices, I knew what I was doing and am in no way a victim. I am more pissed at myself b/c not only did I have my blinders on b/c I was kind of lonely but now I am uncomfortable at a place that had become sort of my safe-haven. I do wish that he had just been a man, and called me, and in five minutes we could have had it all worked out and avoided the bar weirdness. I know that what this Douchebaggo thinks shouldn't hurt my feelings, but it does. As tough as I wish I could be it still hurts when you're rejected, no matter what the circumstances - even if you're rejected by a lame coward. And I was relating my less-than-classy curt conversation w/Douchebaggo, who had no business talking to me at the bar quite frankly, as well as discussing an upcoming trip with my friend when he gave me the label.

When I talk about what's going on in my life, it's not because I feel unfairly put upon, or persecuted, it's just how I deal with things. I am emotional, but only temporarily irrational. I work things out, or deal with even painful things, by talking (sometimes yelling) and just purging myself of bad feelings and then, give me five minutes, I'll laugh about it and move on. So when I'm upset, it's usually b/c I'm hurt. In this emotional state, it's hard for me to take feedback about other people's perspectives, or what I might misperceive or worse, what I am doing wrong because you can't rationalize feelings. I just need to vent and feedback like that is difficult to digest; it says to me, even though it's almost never the intent, that I should just be sucking it up, keeping my mouth shut, letting it go. That kind of feedback almost always comes from guy friends. It feels unfair and shameful. And I don't know how to change this about myself, I certainly can't be silenced ;) but how do I work that out without upsetting friends or seeming nutty? Is it the way I'm communicating or to whom?

This is part of my lifelong struggle, I have always been very sensitive and probably always will be. When someone says I need to lighten up, or not take something personally as also recently happened with another friend, it's like saying, quit being self-focused: quit being Dannielle. Because I do make things personal and they're not always about me, cognitively, I know that and I hate that part of me. It's like in the fourth grade we were reading, as a class, "Charlotte's Web" and I started sobbing. The story was so sad, and it seemed so unjust and unbearable but it was so embarrassing too. The trick is, this is the same part of me that makes me able to relate to other people easily, to be intuitive with friends and comfortable in new situations.

I think it's understandable that when your luck is poor for an amount of time, and you're feeling this big, to feel like you're being followed by the cartoon rainy cloud. Each consecutive thunderboldt is kind of a reminder that you're the wet loser and the bad stuff is sometimes more powerful and thus easier to focus on than the good stuff. Lately, I don't feel like I'm being persecuted, but I feel like I'm toxic and it's spilling over into social and personal relationships. I haven't had a successful relationship in more than two years, and even that is probably still a debatable label. The Danni is unloveable! And not only that, apparently so much so that grown men slink around bars to avoid her. I don't want to hide out but that's how I'm starting to feel. Don't get near me! Your hair will fall out, babies will cry, develop an unibrow, etc. So what people think of me or say seems more acute, sharper. I guess I need to really try to keep my eyes open and really try to keep myself in check because I definitely don't want to be the kind of person who makes every situation about herself and why the world is against her...and yet, lol, I just wrote an 8000 word blog about how I feel about myself. I am just having a hard year but it's not about me being persecuted. That being said, Douchebaggo tries to biz caz Fri talk to me again he's going to have a new spot for my pool stick.