I don’t know how, but in the past 1.5 hours I have suddenly been/felt sucked dry. Absolutely dry.

I had to deal with people I don’t want to deal with. People who are different; people I just don’t understand. And I got mad at them (in my head) for being different, and then mad at everyone else for being the same and for not being the type of people who would be okay with interruptions in their lives.

Just like I’m not okay with interruptions in mine.

And then the guilt started splattering over my thoughts, and I don’t know what it is about guilt, but it makes me want to do something right, or at least have something go right, to compensate for the offenses I perceive myself to have inflicted. At this point, I needed a good conversation, a little uplifting, a sign of approval. But by then I was already sensitive to my own shortcomings, and with each conversation, instead of feeling acceptance and approval, I felt only the other parties’ disinterest, distractedness, or downright disapproval. By the way, how is it that some people can be listening to you and, without saying anything at all, make you feel very judged and very small? I then have to wonder if perhaps it’s more my judgment of myself that makes me feel small, but no, I’m pretty sure it’s through their response that I felt the smallness in the first place. Maybe.

Perhaps the people I didn’t get, the people who were different, the people who received a drained response from me (whether they were the ones who drained me or not), felt the same disinterest, distractedness, and/or disapproval radiating from me. I can’t really say. But I have got to stop relying on the approval of people, and I must grow out of this habit of being happy and nice and sweet only when my circumstances are making me happy.