Struggling

I have to be honest...I posted last week about my absolute and total boredom and I was not being totally honest. As the saying goes, "Idol hands are the devil's tools" and that has probably proved true for me lately. Due to the immence amount of time I now have on my hands, I have been extremely aware of everything around me and allowed everything to become an annoyance. I am ashamed to admit that although my next door neighbor plays her music extremely loud usually from 10-11pm, I have not behaved in a very christian like manner. Instead of politely going over and knocking on her door and asking her if she would mind turning her music down a little, I have banged on the wall separating our rooms on several occassions. I even sunk so low that I turned up the volume on my TV extremely loud to "battle" with her music. Each time she has reciprecated the gestures accordingly and banged back or turned her music up louder and I can't say that I blame her for her actions. She honestly has every right to turn her music up and play it when she wants. It took me a long time to realize that she wasn't really hurting anyone with this music and that includes me.

This is just one of my many and rude offences this summer and I have another confession. Instead of behaving like a lady and being polite to others no matter what their offences might be, I have chosen to be cruel and rude to them. This hurts me so deeply because I do not like being hateful to others on purpose. Sometimes I do let myself get upset over trivial matters and I behave like a child. The saying "an eye for an eye" comes from the Bible and essentially means that equitable retaliation should be taken for an offended party. I should not be using retaliation to settle problems I have with others especially due to the fact that I am 23 years old. No matter how old you are, there are always lessons to be learned and hopefully I can learn that all the harm I have caused is to myself. I have made myself into a rude and selfish person which is not anywhere close to the person I want to or know I can be.

I think my problem stems from the fact that I am absolutely frightened of negative interactions with other people. I have never been good at standing up for myself and I have very little confidence in myself when dealing with the opinions of others. Since childhood I have been extremely sensative to the emotions and feelings of others. When I was in middle school I remember being a nervous wreck! I would literally come home from school and lock myself in my room and sob if someone at school said something bad to me about someone else. I was terrified that it would be twisted around and that other person would think I had been talking negatively about them behind their backs. Middle school was a really difficult time for me, but as time went on I eventually started to move past this fear and I was actually a nice person who didn't need to talk negatively about others. In high school I found the courage to tell someone when someone else was bothering me and after that the emotions just poured out. Now, as an adult, I find no difficulty in running my mouth and speaking negatively about others behind their backs, but I seem to have a meltdown the second anyone confronts me about anything. I desperately need to find a balance between standing up for myself and not being offensive to the needs of others.
I want to take this opportunity to appologize to anyone I have hurt through my drawbacks. I am desperately aware of these negative things in my life and now that I am fully aware that I do not want to live this way anymore, I will try as hard as I can to be more understanding of the space and desires of others. God gives us these struggles to make us better people and to challenge our characters. I want to thank Lauren for one of her last posts about looking at the way we treat ourselves as opposed to others. This post really made me realize that I need to make some major adjustments in my life!