Jeff’s blog

Back when I was in school, I was hurt a lot as far as feelings go. I was made fun of, ignored, whatever, you get the idea. I ended up with the attitude that I don’t care what other people think, and I have had this attitude since. And for the most part, that attitude has served me well. Until now that is.

People don’t like me at work for various reason, and I don’t care. You hear rumors about me depending on who you talk to and I don’t care. I probably start half the rumors doing things I shouldn’t but I don’t care. Now with my separation and inevitable divorce, the rumors are really flying and I thought I didn’t care. Apparently I was wrong. She was my wife’s friend as well as mine. She still is and that’s fine with me, I’ve never asked anyone to take sides. Most people have been good about this and are still friends with both. Only 1 person comes to mind that was both of our friends doesn’t like me anymore. And that hurt. I’ve always been able to shrug people off that don’t like me, even friends who have gotten mad at me. But for some reason it bugged me and took awhile to get over it. Technically you could probably say I’m not completely over it.

Anyways, today at work, my soon to be ex-wife came in and pulled the friend mentioned above over to the side and started talking. I could see my wife keep turning around and looking at me so I know they were talking about me. I guess technically I didn’t “know” but you know what I mean. It brought up a lot of feelings of getting made fun of when I was younger. Like I said, normally it doesn’t bother me, but for some reason this time did. Drudged up all those feeling of being left out and being picked on.

I guess those feelings never really go away. You may learn to deal with those doing it to you and you may learn to bury it, but you never forget how it feels to be on this end. It caused me skip many, many days of school growing up. I hated school. Now that I’m older, I realize it wasn’t school that I hated, but the way I felt at school. I like to go through those old high school photos on my friends facebook accounts but looking at them also depresses me. Reminds me of all those feelings again.

I have grown and have a decent life. I’m in love, have 2 wonderful kids and a consistent job. I have the usual complaints of working too much and not enough money but I would describe my life now as happy most of the time. Which makes me realize how much those repressed feelings can hold over you when brought to your attention. I’m hoping by typing this blog, that I will make myself realize that very thing so they can’t control my life. And who knows, maybe somebody out there may learn something as well.

Where to start, kind of an odd day today. I did something I very rarely do, kinda blew up about something stupid when it wasn’t even the reason I was frustrated. I pride myself on being in good control of my emotions, I very rarely say something I don’t mean (I said rarely, I’m certainly far from perfect). The day started off alright, then gradually went downhill.

I texted Cheri “I feel all alone”
her response “why?”
me “not sure how it started but i’m realizing how few friends I have. Which would be zero”
and so on

All awhile this is going on, I noticed we are only running 3 anodizers (I know most are lost but try to bear with me.) It irritated the crap out of me that we were working all weekend and we’re not even running full production. I go to break and just start ripping into the guy running the middle section (who was only doing what his line leader told him too.) Literally, couldn’t stop myself, I was so pissed. After break, I went back upstairs to work and started thinking, why did that bother me so much, I’m used to the stupid things they do here at work, it doesn’t usually irritate me that bad. The more I thought about it, the more I understood, it was a reaction to my mood. So I had to contemplate on what mood I was in and why. In the end, it came down to being frustrated that the one person who understands me and the one person that I love lives 600 miles away and it was frustrating me.

I’m a thinker, I like to work out problems in my head. Every time Cheri and I are together and we leave, I spend the next couple of hours just trying to think of way for us to be together and both of us have what we want. After a couple of really good evenings this week chatting with her online, some really good, deep conversations. I found myself doing it again, just trying to figure out a way. I wanted to talk to someone about it, but I just don’t really have that kind of friendship with anyone else other than Cheri and I think today I got to a breaking point. Once I realized what all the feelings were about, I felt stupid and embarrassed and ashamed of the way I acted. I couldn’t believe I drug stuff from home into the work place, hence the something I rarely ever do.

In the end, I apologized to the guy that I gave a hard time too (I think he was shocked.) He harassed me some, and said we were cool. I even told everyone in the break room at lunch that I was wrong and that I had apologized to him.

After I identified what was bugging me, everything kinda fell back in place, my mood lifted and I felt better. I’m not sure what lesson you are supposed to take from this blog, but I know once I figured out it had nothing to do with the guy, I felt like crap. I always got on people for dragging their home life into work and taking it out on other people, and here I was doing the same thing. One lesson I guess I can take from this is next time someone is yelling at me, maybe I shouldn’t give it back because they just may need to vent and as long as it doesn’t hurt me, let it go. I have a real hard time letting things go when I feel that I’m wronged and I guess I feel wronged by falling in love with someone who I can’t be with physically. Mentally, we are strong, we know what we want and we both know what’s holding each back from moving. The problem is, we’re both good parents and neither want to leave their kids. I guess I can blame my mom for teaching me family always comes first. I know one day, we will both be together, I just hope I don’t go crazy or do too much of the stupid stuff mentioned above before it happens.