Pride

I wish I were about to write about U2's song, Pride.  But, alas, I am not.  This may come as an utter, unexpected, tragic shock to y'all (as it did to me), but I have a tee tiny confession.  I have pride.  There I said it.  We are all done here.  I wish. 

Last night, standing in a friend's kitchen, probably complaining about something and hoping for some justification in my thoughts, I was very gently made aware that I may have a minute amount of pride.  Okay, it was never classified as minute, but I am just trying to justify my situation here.  My ears are burning right now as I type this.  I'm thinking that could be that minute amount of pride that is bubbling to the surface...  I'll be honest here.  As bad as this may sound- I've never actually thought that I had any pride.  I'm talking the self protective, insecure kind.  Not the good, healthy, enthusiastic kind.  Yes, I have a dollop of the bad kind. I googled pride and I am going with my dear friend WIKI's secondary definition.  This one I will receive.  WIKI says "Pride can be described as a disagreement with the truth."  Yeah. I think I've got that one.  It's amazing that I have made it this far, completely oblivious to this little fact.  Gosh my ears are on fire.  It's funny that on the eve of Valentines it reared it's ugly little head.  I am usually pretty easy going, go with the flow.  But this past week, I had a horrible shot of indecisiveness, with which I tried to chase down with insecurity.  Don't get me wrong- I am one of the most insecure people that I know.  But, often times, I will mask my pride with insecurity.  I am not sure if this is making sense at all, but ain't nobody got time to figure that out.  Back to my story.  So I got invited to do something really fun.  On Valentines.  With cool married people.  People that I love.  At first, I was all about it.  Then as the time got closer, rain man started over analyzing and it just went down hill.  So, I chose the most healthy solution.  Bail.  (I am aware this is not a good solution, in case you are wondering).  I started thinking all of these dumb little thoughts.  What if they were just inviting me because they got an extra ticket?  Or they are just being nice? I mean, its Valentines, why would they invite me?  So I started thinking worse.  What if they don't really like me/want to hang out with me?  No idea how one's train of thought can jump from one end to the other like this, but I need to figure out how to cash in because I am the master of this.  Those insecure thoughts are just a symptom.  A symptom to what you ask?  Here is the nitty gritty truth ( I am now sweating and will probably pass out right after this).  The truth is that deep down I was/am petrified of being labelled.  What?  This is confusing I know.  This is what I live with everyday.  I had this deep, down, secret fear of being labelled as one of the single people... Why?  I do not know. I mean, its a scientific fact.  I am not married.  Therefore, clinically (or something) I am single.  It's not like I am the lone single person in Charleston County.  I mean get a grip woman.  But, for some reason, I feel much better, just never saying, acknowledging or thinking about it.  I have some sort of shutdown factor here.  Fear of embarrassment or failure or something. Or all of the above.  I believed a dumb lil lie about myself somewhere (why can I not be immune to this..). This is how I deal with a lot of different facets.  Yeah, it's really worked for me.... It's only taken 27 whole years to figure it out..  But, it is a fact.  Okay.  I have this little self protection safety mechanism that just does its thing.  Half the time I am not even aware.  I'm not writing this thing because it is Valentines Day.  I am not anti.  In fact, I have had a darn good day actually and it's only going to get better while rocking out to Grace Potter.  (Thanks to Tyler for talking me back into it..)  But, it makes me highly uncomfortable promoting singleness or anything of that nature. I mean, I break out in an internal rash or something, because I would rather die than sit around talking about singleness.  And that would be my pride.  Boom.  So that's what I'm going to be working on this season of Lent. 

Now I'll go the corner and die...

Just pretend we never had this lil convo..
Happy Valentines Day?

Sarah