Type-A Overachiever

I had a horrid day Thursday which promised to drag into Friday...and on and off through the whole weekend. The problem isn't the person causing me the problem, but myself. Why? First let me explain some backstory...

I've struggled with type-A personality my entire life...being overly competitive, needing to be the fastest, strongest, smartest, sexiest, most popular...you name it and I needed to do it better than anyone else. I am a people pleaser to the umpteenth power.

Makes for a great slave btw, thanks for asking...lol.

The problem is...for me it's a problem...a compulsion. I was forced into counseling when I was fifteen...what nowadays is recognized as a "cutting problem" was diagnosed as failed suicide attempts...thankfully my parents did things old school...no hospitals just the privately paid practitioners who made house calls...

The problem was, they all thought I was lying...they honestly thought I wanted to kill myself...I had no intention of dying...I only wanted to hurt myself...

I was smart enough to figure out that if I was checked daily for fresh bleeds...I wasn't going to be able to do what I wanted in life...

I found other ways to inflict pain on myself...slapping, belts, switches...and best of all most bruises could be explained away...

I'm not sure how I really survived being fifteen...
I fell from grace, dropping from top of my class to ninth...all because of a single "C" on an otherwise perfect record...the sky did not fall but almost...and new ways to trigger intense pain were learned.

It was a compulsion that would follow me into adulthood...until at twenty-one I started writing down all the stuff in my head...I met my muse.

I still have a penchant for pain, but now I let others torment me for fun and sexual gratification...not for reasons of self-loathing and punishment...see...I'm healed. Woot!

One would think...
On Thursday I got an email from someone I barely know telling me how disappointed they were in me because I could not meet with them until today, Monday, five whole days after the request for a meeting...really? DISAPPOINTED? In me? Seriously.

I cannot ever remember anyone in my life ever using those exact words, because even at my most messed up...first and foremost I pleased people.

I have been beating myself up mentally ever since.
I KEPT SEEING THE EMAIL IN MY HEAD!
Disappointed.
Disappointed.
Disappointed.
Sir Hotness said stop thinking about it...like that works...

How did I survive Thursday to today? I wrote...a lot...my muse came to my rescue in big way and for three of the days...Sat, Sun, Mon a.m. I focused on a new WIP...logging 20K words...and watched Ironman in between...the thing was...I had to keep my mind busy or I would think about that email.

So today was the meeting with the one I'd disappointed...
The thing is...she didn't need to see me before today...and even after meeting... nothing was resolved that couldn't have been handled over the phone or by email... there is one pet-peeve that I have and that's wasted time.

Today, I wasted four hours...
But from Thursday until the meeting I wasted countless moments in self-flagellation...if only of the mental variety.

It's a reasonable conclusion that I am still having problems with my fight to destroy my type-A personality but thanks to all the angst and emotion that came out of this weekend...I have a fairly good start on a new manuscript...