Me, misjudged

Sob story: How the small-minded remarks of those closest to you can hijack your self-esteem almost irremediably

Sometimes the people closest to you have the capacity to offend you the most. I don’t know if this line is cliché; what I know is that it is quite incomplete.

What I know is that the ones who've offended me the most are people close enough to me to be able to utter a seemingly innocuous imbecility that turns out to be deadly. What I know is it’s small minds within my vicinity who judge me rashly that tend to offend me the most.

I try my best to be a forgiver, but I make it a point to write down and document every crime, if only to make sure I won’t be inflicting it on anyone dear to me.

One of the most unforgettable types of offense was the one time I bought some almond-topped croissants for breakfast and someone told me I’m “sosyal,” which actually meant I’m being “pa-sosyal” (social climber?) – someone trying very hard to be what I was not or would ever be. It meant that I should stick only to the humbler, locally made breads that I knew. They always say that truth hurts, but that the morning, I also found out that lies also hurt. I was offended, not because I was accused of the truth, but because I was wrongfully accused. If I was offended, it’s because I was thought of so low by, of all people, someone I expected to be affirming me.

What the heck did "pa-sosyal" mean? It just didn’t make sense to me, then or now. Was acting natural and being myself "sosyal"? Was being adventurous hypocritical? Wow. Terrible. What does that supposed to mean? That I should act more humbly or allow myself to be dictated by what others would think or, worse, act like my inner animal? That I should dirty myself up, dress up in rags, eat dirt, talk dirty, and remember always that I’m dirt-poor? And it's because these are what’s expected of me?

Soon, I began to realize I was being accused of misplaced pride, overestimation of self-worth, presumption, presumptuousness, selfish ambition, and a host of closely related sins. I was only being cut to pieces and, to that person’s mind, I was being put back in my proper place. I was being thought of very lowly, as lowly as that person thought of herself.

**

Another instance that I remember recoiling from metaphysical anguish is during a garage sale when someone innocently referred to my preferred reading materials – the different glossy US magazines I was donating, or dumping -- this way: “Pampatalino ba ‘yan?” (“Are those meant to make you smart (or worse, come off as smart)”?)

It took me some split seconds to answer a silly yes. But after being forced to say yes smilingly and self-deprecatingly, I knew another gross judgment has been passed on my person and character (no matter if it was all unintentional); I just couldn’t put my finger on the Freudian or Jungian slip, but I knew there was some kind of faux pas made somewhere.

It took me a few seconds later to realize that I was being accused of misplaced lust for knowledge. But just like the first time, I had no choice but to give the other cheek -- a very hard thing to do for me because I wasn’t particularly given to humility, either. And it’s a fact that I can have an unquenchable lust for knowledge.

What was just so humiliating was not to be able to defend myself and to prove the person wrong. If humble pie were an actual pie, then I knew its taste very well – awful, bitter like a nasty medicine you ought to take only in liquid form. It’s very frustrating, furthermore, not to be able to explain that I read what I read because I am genuinely entertained and not because I want to show off. It is so injurious to hear a remark that, in a few succinct words, cheapens wholesale the way I conduct myself in life; it reduces everything into a mere posturing – as though everything I do is with the thought of accumulating knowledge in mind, with the aim of impressing people with my intellect. Besides, what’s so wrong about improving one’s self, one’s knowledge?

**

Thankfully, these comments, willfully malicious or otherwise, came few and far between. Nevertheless, when they came, they seem to come at the right moment, attacking me at my most vulnerable. Now I fully understand why that character in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado would resort to foul sleight-of-hand murder on account of a seemingly insignificant slight.

The latest horrendously rash judgment I got was when someone implied to my face that I didn’t know how to manage my time. At least I appreciated the fact that I was directly informed of my inadequacy. But this one was even worse because it was blatantly false, compared to the first two, with no tinge of truth whatsoever. How do I explain to the dense that writing and thinking coherently needs a great deal of concentration, not to mention, lots of time? How do I explain that my current job and current sked are so draining mentally and physically that all I’m left with is nothing else but a little time to do the things I really enjoy doing? This was a lot worse because now I was being accused of laziness and irresponsibility, too.

It made me take a double-take and ask myself, “Am I the type of person who gets offended so easily?” "Am I too onion-skinned?" But I have no other answer except a steely and resounding “I don’t think so!” Call it being defensive, but I survived Citizens Military Training being insulted in public and made to do push-ups, and I didn’t see anything wrong with it! Of course, at that time I wished those UP Vanguard officers who had traumatized me died of instant death, but all that is past now – past comedy, to be exact. The verbal abuse, I would concede, was part of the training for those perceived as sissies or klutz to toughen up a little bit. I’d like to think I’m immune to people disapproving of me. After all, I grew up being looked down upon as the family’s ugly duckling because I was surprisingly too dark-skinned for a clan of part-mestizos. I grew up being derided for being “lampa” (klutz) and worse. I never got the encouragement I needed, except for the kind women in my immediate family, and if ever I did, I knew it’s an act of consolation, an act of trying to deflect the projectiles of pain that went to my general direction. After all, I had my own taste of office politics to consider as well. It’s impossible to shield anyone anyway from cruel people and cruel tongues because people will always be people and wagging tongues will always be wagging, and I perfectly understand that. People will always have myopic vision. People will always be judgmental even when they know they can get easily misled or carried away by emotion. Just like me sometimes, when I think of certain people as slothful, only to get remorseful upon my discovery that they are only apparently lazy -- they are actually asthmatics or diabetics or simply people who are allergic to something or other, people who get tired so easily.

It’s okay to be looked down upon by other people, but to be cut down to size by your own people cuts to the quick and infinitely so. To be NOT understood is but natural, but to be misunderstood by people you’re familiar with and to whom you are very familiar… that’s double the punishment!

But, wait, it’s a triple punishment, actually -- when you realize that these people are most likely the people you’ll also find too impossible to avoid.

I don’t like dramatic confrontations, but if I understand what I was taught about morals and such, then amazingly I am even left with two incredible Christian duties: (a) the duty to tell my offender that I was wronged and (b) the duty to forgive unconditionally thereafter.

Like I said, I try hard to be a forgiving person. But in the case of the people closest to me who insult me, it seems that the only way to ease the pain is to think of the times I have been equally rash in my judgment myself.