Understanding people

[Killyourmind]

Hi,

I am a 20 something year old female who is single and I have never been married. I recently graduated college and moved with a person I met in my hometown to Colorado. I moved here because I had an abundance of job opportunities. Here I have spent the last 7 months trying to focus on myself and understand life. By this, I mean I have tried to spend a great amount of time on my own and better myself (mostly mental health). I have not even kissed someone in this time frame. Basically, in the past I put up a "barrier" where I did not care what others thought about me and I did not care about them. Upon realization however, I found that I was masking my emotions with this armor like I could handle anything. The more days that go by I encounter inner battles where my self-esteem and self-worth is hurting.

I didn't have the best childhood but I always had food on the table. My dad is an alcoholic and continued daily drinking until I was about 8-10 years old. I remembered he had a short-temper. I spent every other weekend with him. My mom has always smoked pot. She is not mentally well. When I was 18 I found out about tragedies that happened to her when she was a young girl by someone who should have been trusted. My mom was not motivated and could not hold a job. I did however, decide to stay with her because of less boundaries of what I was wanting to do as a child. In middle school, I had enough I traded in having no discipline for having more consistency and moved in with my dad. It took a lot of getting used to... the allotted one night a week at a friends house and the repercussions if i misbehaved or had a falling grade in school. I wouldn't say I deemed my childhood as horrible, but it is nothing I would want to give my future child(ren).

The reason I'm writing this is because I have had a very hard time with people. I find myself to always be kind. I read people very well and I automatically can tell if there is jealousy or why their behavior is or is not a certain way. I hate to be this person because some people don't even know they're jealous... its often in their subconscious mind. I am very saddened because I almost feel like I am bullied sometimes. I am a higher wage earner for my age group ($39 an hour) but have pursued this since a very young age and worked hard, hard as in full-time job and full-time schooling. Its like I knew I was going to be in the dental field. My first experience with someone being jealous was when I started working at my childhood dental office at age 18. Here I gained some experience before I started my schooling. I worked with a girl that was single with a young boy and she was very nice to me at first. I cleaned all the rooms, set up operatories and as time went on I did more and more to help this very busy practice run efficiently. I would clean/setup/sterilize/take patients back, etc for about 30 rooms in a five hour day. That is a very busy practice. The more I would do it would seem the assistant would be afraid I was going to take her job or be appreciated more. I wanted nothing to do with her duties, she was a great dental assistant but I knew it wasn't for me. She became very mean and condescending. If a magazine wasn't perfectly placed in a room after I cleaned it (note how busy I always was) she would make it a point to where everyone would hear it.
HERE IS THE BOTTOM LINE ON THIS: Ive noticed single women with children seem to really take it out on people that seem to have taken the slow road and done things right. LISTEN UP! That is not my problem... that was your decision.

Now here I am... sometimes I get picked on at work. Unfortunately, I am the highest wage earner in my social circle/at work outside of the dentists... although, I don't really have a social circle. I find myself very disinterested with the human race and therefore I'm not really pursuing friendships or social outings (that's my own problem, I know I have problems but I don't bully people, ignore them, try to make their life miserable, make them feel inadequate etc) This has caused me to have to dumb myself down around my "friends". I rarely talk about my job anymore because it became "This is all you ever talk about." Or i'm faulted for something else. Honestly, I'm not blind or ignorant... I would talk about it when I was about to graduate but stopped when my friends didn't want to hear about my accomplishments.

So an example of problems at work is me... my 20 something year old self, joking around with my coworker while putting my head behind her head while she is having a casual conversation. She turns around and screams at me and says "IM ON THE PHONE". So i walk away and I hear her say to front desk that "I'm annoying as ###$" So I came out of my office and said... "what did you say?" Not in a rude tone. She replied in a louder manner "I said you're annoying as ###$" This one is in her forties and is talking to a 24 year old like this. I don't use foul language very often so I just said... "well I thought you thought I was funny, you always are laughing at my jokes." (I try to be a goofy person even though I struggle with a little bit of anxiety/depression on a daily basis) She then yelled "Well you were mocking me earlier like a 5 year old (which she laughed at) it's time for you to GROW UP." I said "well that's fine I wont joke around with you anymore you could've asked nicely." Honestly this didn't even hurt my feelings. I was just thinking... GREAT another loose cannon around here. Its worse in Colorado ... lack of oxygen to the brain. This entire time I'm thinking... okay so I need to grow up? I mean here i am 20 something never late to work, treat everyone with respect, be professional-including that I would never raise my voice at a co-worker like that and I am not one to talk behind peoples back and point out their flaws. Of course after this I did do a bit of the immature and poke fun at her yelling at me, which I know is immature and unprofessional. I also told her I don't want to grow up. I will never change my sense of humor as long as it's not hurting others.

Now here's my last struggle. My roommate and I. Sometimes I feel she does thing out of spite. I am so sorry to admit this but I was cleaning around the house and found her journal I opened it and found that after I asked her if I could join her to church sometime that she wrote "I don't want her to go to church with me... I am jealous, how do I control this anger and jealously towards her." Well hey at least she admitted it. I compliment people that I'm jealous of and if I think someone is more intelligent than me I want to learn from them. So back to the out of spite. She knows I like things very tidy so I do my laundry, all of the whites, clean often, etc. I ask her to maintain. I come home to sometimes having a new spill on the carpet from her coffee, or a piece of food on the carpet adjacent to the kitchen. It seems like after I work the hardest there's always something new. A new thing that started is ill clean her towel and the white put the fresh ones away, and now shes throwing them on the floor. I asked her to stop throwing it on the floor and she said "I've got a lot on my mind I'm not going to worry about a towel" Well, actually if you hung it up it'd be less work because you wouldn't have to drop it on the floor and then pick it up later. Silly, I know but there's a lot more to add to that. Then she asked if I wanted to go to our landlords to hangout today and I said "Sure, I think I should drive separately because I don't want to be there for long." She asked what time I wanted to leave and I said "by five" and she said that's fine we can drive together. So that we did, then at five she said "i'm going to help her plant some flowers we will leave by 5:30. This time comes around and she's just talking and I'm sitting there looking annoyed because of course now I have to be the bad guy and eventually say something. I'm sitting there by myself she doesn't say a word to me 6 comes around and she says "okay ready?" and I said "yeah" in a sarcastic tone. Then she doesn't even initiate a soon to go but instead goes up to the little kid and starts a whole new conversation and I see her looking at me like shes trying to make me mad. Then I finally say "okay, well I would've driven separately, can we go now." She replies with well why don't you go wait in the car and I will tell them were leaving.' At this point I don't even care make me out to be the bad guy. BYE

I cant take it. I don't have problems with people but I'm sick of having to dumb myself down because I feel bad for others... why should I? I can't hurt others so why do they try to hurt me?