Unapologetically Yours

I am the kind of person who blames themselves for everything.  Personal accountability is a wonderful thing that is sadly lacking in much of the world's population today, but for the few of us out there who were born with it, accountability can flourish to the point of over abundance in our lives.  I have found myself in quite a few toxic relationships where it took me years to realize I wasn't the problem.  Seeing that the relationship was broken and unhealthy I kept blaming myself, trying to fix myself, trying to be perfect, and never realizing that I was the only one asking how can I be better for you, reading the books, taking the classes, and just generally trying at all; the other person did nothing to be better for me.  As quick as they were with a criticism or an answer to how I could be better for them, they didn't even ask how they could be better for me.   It all had to come crashing down for me to realize that no matter how hard I was working at building us up, the other person was working harder at tearing us down.  For someone like me saying, "I didn't do anything to deserve this and I didn't do anything wrong," was the hardest thing I've ever had to admit.  In a way, it was freeing.  It freed me up to be a person with faults and weakness and failure.  I didn't have to be perfect anymore.  I've taken that little lesson to heart as I dabble in the world of social media because no matter how good you are, people find the nastiest things to say and the dumbest things to complain about.  The old me would have been devastated.  The new me is better able to laugh and shrug it off.  

Recently I got a comment on one of my Youtube videos that was so absurd that I actually laughed and read it out loud.  It seems that I misspelled a word in one of the titles.  In a video about repurposing wedding dresses instead of "Dyeing" I wrote "Dying."  A person viewing it felt the need to shriek, "Change the title!  I thought this was about what to do with your wedding dress after you're dead!"  Are you kidding me?  While the sarcastic side of me was tempted to publish the comment and write back, "Haha, gotcha, bitch!"  I decided to delete it instead.  The thumbnail for the video shows before and after photos of dresses that have been dyed.  That should have been clue #1 that it was about dye not death.  Clue #2 should have been that I'm not dead.  Clue #3 should really be who cares what happens to their wedding dress after they're dead?!  I guess if you're repurposing the dress of someone who has died, you'll probably dye it and so the video becomes relevant again.  This comment isn't quite as brilliant as the reader who went back to a post from 2015 and screamed at me to correct a spelling error, but it's right up there, and in the past it would have caused me so much distress that I would have immediately changed the spelling and publicly apologized to the offended party.

I'm a huge proponent of being open to correction but that's not really what this is.  What we see going on on the internet is just entitled people with empty lives complaining and criticizing in order to fill them up.  If I apologized and went back and changed one letter in my video from over a year ago, do you suppose it would make that person happy?  No, not at all.  A happy person would have laughed at my mistake and at themselves for thinking anyone would make such an absurd video and then moved on with their lives.  She's an unhappy person and she gets a payoff from making sure that everyone knows it.  If it would help anything or anyone, I probably would change it and say sorry, but it won't help her or anyone else.  She has already moved on and found other things to nitpick and complain about, and if I spent my time trying to please everyone on the internet, I'd work myself to death.  No, thank you.  There will always be people who like me and people who don't.  People who don't just kindly move along.  I make mistakes, I'm human, I'm ok with it and I'm not going to apologize for just being human.  Although I am a firm believe in admitting when I've had screwed up and asking for forgiveness when I've hurt people, but let's be real, that's not what this is.  This is someone looking to be offended and finding it in silly places like type-o's. 

So, if you read this blog or watch the Youtube channel, here's your heads-up that I'm human, I make mistakes and if you can't handle it, I'll understand if we have to part ways.  I wish it weren't so, but that's just how it has to be.  I can't spend all my time trying to measure up to other people's standards and stay sane, especially when those people don't even have blogs or Youtube channels but feel qualified to criticize those who do. I'll take imperfection and sanity over that, thank you very much.  You don't have to be perfect to love your life, or good at things like to enjoy them, so I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and enjoying it in spite of the mistakes.