Monday, April 30, 2012

How to Drive Yourself Insane

There are a number of things that can cause a person to lose their mind.

For instance, lack of sleep. When you sleep, your mind doesn't shut off. Most people think so...but most people are wrong. Instead, your brain takes this time to organize the thoughts in your head and make psychological To-Do lists. Ever notice how you're ready to go after you  wake up from going to bed on time and snoozed through to the morning light? Exactly. And when you cheat yourself out of sleep, you're really cheating your brain out of de-cluttering. When you wake up on those days and feel unprepared about the test you were sooo ready for yesterday or you forget basics of your daily routine, you can blame nothing else but your lack of sleep.

BUT lack of sleep is not what drove me insane. Nope. I mean, maybe it was a factor...but what drove me insane all semester, was hatred. When you have a fight with your friends, most people have the common sense to apoligize and move on. In my situation, though, no one wanted to be the bigger person to step up and rekindle everything before too much time went by. January. That's when it all went down. A comment on Facebook was taken the wrong way, one friend defended the other, it was two against one, and I lost. They both exiled me from the friendship. I lost my best friend of three years. (And another 'friend' who I secretly didn't like anyways because she's quite bitchy, snotty, and arrogant.) Almost three months later, though, I fixed it.

How does hatred drive you insane?
Simple.

When you hate someone, what do you do?
You become paranoid about what they think, you try not to embarrass yourself in their presence, you think of new mean things to call them, you spend your school day avoiding them, and you spend your free time talking about them.

So, if you and a BFF have a fight and WWIII breaks out, how should you handle it? Exactly the opposite of how I handled it. I treated them both like dirt. Every chance that came to me, I was rude to them and called them some sort of a name. When people brought them up in conversation, I made sure I explained how much dislike I had for them and why. I started nast rumors about them and made stuff up about them. They were controlling my life and they weren't even trying.

Don't do any of that.

Instead:
-Be polite. Kill 'em with kindness. Instead of driving yourself insane, you'll drive them insane because they won't be able to stop worrying about what you're secretly up to.

-Keep them out of your mind. Ignore them. When you pretend as if they don't exist, they tend to actually not exist. Except for when they put themselves in your life. That's their problem, then. In the end, they can't drive you insane of they don't exist in your mind.
***This means cutting yourself off from them. If you're positive that you aren't in the wrong here, no backsies. You're finished with them until they apologize to you. If you apologize without actually thinking that you're wrong, you could be the bigger person, I guess, but that gives them an upperhand that they don't deserve. They need to grow up and learn to take responsibility for their actions.
-Get over what happened. Move on. Whenever someone does you wrong, you're just counting the days for an apology. Finally, when they do apologize, you want to make them eat their apology. That's not helpful for anyone, not even yourself. Especially if you never get that apology. Unless you need evidence of a threat for an investigation, DELETE. If it's a Facebook message, text messages, or emails, delete them. Why would you want to hold onto them? Don't stop there! Delete them from Facebook, delete their number from your phone, and delete them from your life. As I said before, they can't drive you insane if they aren't really there, right?