The art of not being offended by casually and thoughtlessly offensive people, is something I am very bad at. I lose my patience with such people and then I go into my shell and sulk.
I sulk until I am very hungry and ignore the dreadful headache which is the first sign of my growing hunger, falling blood sugar levels and consequently growing temper.
What I do, is not mature, but in this state of mind, all I really want is some understanding, some attention and very importantly, some good comfort food.
Needless to say, these people are not clued in to realise what is going on. Their emotional intelligence is pretty low, but instead of cutting them slack for that, I get into a spiralling race to match that level myself.
Of course I don’t get what I want, and instead I go through the phase of silent seething anger.
I make plans in my head that I will never deal with these people again - but usually there is always something stopping me from taking it to the drastic (read verbal) ‘goodbye’ route.
Maybe it is my upbringing that prevents me from being completely honest with these people.
I can be very blunt with people I love/like, but I am not all that good a communicator with the rest of the world. It is, I think in my gene to pretend that these people don’t affect me, even when they do. To admit to them that they make me feel this bad, would reveal my secret vulnerable side to them, and I am hardwired to hide my weakness and insecurities from people in general.
What then follows is a cold war with my self and I just absorb all this hatred and anger, stash it into the deep freezer part of my brain (perhaps best described as the heart) where it stays, never forgotten, and always semi fresh, ready to be thawed back into life when the situation demands (or during a few particularly bad days of PMS).
p.s. This is going to be part of an ongoing series called 'My notes on anger and taking offence' where I will try to decipher my feelings around getting angry instead of simply cooping up. Let's see if I can continue this effort.
