(I’ve been kicking around a half-finished draft of this for a while. Theresa inspired me to finally finish it. Thanks, T.)
I try to be a positive person. I try not to talk shit about people behind their backs. I try to find silver linings. I try to fix problems instead of just complaining about them. I try not to use sarcasm as a weapon. I try not to hide behind passive-aggression. I try to give the benefit of the doubt. I try to step back from things when they make me too angry. I try to focus on the big picture, the long game, the grander scale at which things tend to work out okay. I don’t always succeed, but I try.
I feel things more deeply than most. When I’m happy, I’m ecstatic; when I’m sad, I’m heartbroken; when I’m mad, I am fucking furious. I have a powerful sense of empathy. It’s why I love going to parties, even as an introvert, why I prefer my movie theatres crowded, why I can’t bear overhearing arguments. I soak up the emotions of the people around me whether I want to or not.
And so I try to surround myself with people who lift me up, people who support and create and rejoice, people around whom I thrive. My fiancée; my friends; my internet people: they’re the reason I smile and laugh and feel warm and fuzzy inside every single day, the reason I’m strong enough to face obstacles head-on instead of ducking out, the reason I can get up every morning and work on building this life that I have and that I love.
I’m not perfect. A few weeks ago I snapped and sent a nasty email to someone who’d been pissing me off since the summer. Unloading months of rage should have been cathartic as hell, but I spent the rest of the day cranky, sullen, shiftless. Responding to negative people—engaging them at all—only drags you down to their level. You can’t talk them out of their pit. You can’t show them the error of their ways. You can’t deliver the crushing bon mot that convinces them of your superiority. You can’t beat them at all—you can only join them.
People who live in an emotional gutter, who whine about problems they do sweet fuck-all to solve, who ooze snide disdain for anything that doesn’t meet their personal standards of worth, who hide in their fortresses of irony and rip on other people to make themselves look funnier, smarter, more enlightened—those people are cancer, and they get cut out of my life accordingly.
I try to be a positive person. It’s not always easy, but it is so fucking worth it.
