Judgement Call

I grew up thinking it was bad to judge people. My mother had been a drug addict in her past, and pretty much every adult I knew had been as well. Plus we were poor and when you are poor you either go one of two ways. You either grow to hate poor people or you learn to love the value system they give you. Then growing up people didn't like me very much. I was too tall, and too poor, and overall just pretty weird so I didn't fit easily. I befriended other ineffective people. In middle school two of my friends were deaf and one was definitely breaching little person status. In high school I was friends with any weirdo with a leather jacket. They all did drugs and came from shitty homes. No ones mom drove a new car, no one was going to college. They were the left behinds, and I liked it there. I liked it because no one judged me, well at least not for things I couldn't help. Don't get me wrong there was a lot of high school bullshit, but it wasn't about me really.  Well it may have been about me, but I just don't take things that way. I am not all that competitive, but I am an alpha female. I'm  insecure on my own, but in a group  I assume the position of the leader over a period of time and I never question it. If I am in a bar I'm not scouting the room for who I need to take down. I naturally gravitate towards the intellectually fucking odd and secure myself with that person specifically. Somehow I end up with all of these people who wouldn't really hang out together, but have a common thread. So when someone attacks my personality or the way I dress, something shallow in nature, I just find that person undesirable. I don't take it personally. I don't sit back and think, is this person right? I think, that person obviously thinks differently than I, and we must share different values. Plus, I just am not fond of people who are out to hurt other people. Regardless I think it is just a shitty way to interact with people.

In my life the more defective (emotionally or otherwise) you were, the more I probably wanted to be around you. I take people in a lot. I don't think I've had an apartment where someone wasn't sleeping on my couch for an extended period of time. Even in high school several friends of mine were abandoned by their own families and they just lived with me. There wasn't a big discussion about it, they just slept there one night and never left. Not a lot of boundaries with me. I'm not a private person, either is my mother which is where a lot of this stems from I'm sure. It gets me into trouble a lot. Especially now that I am an adult and a parent, I'm realizing that who I am, yet again, does not fit into this life. You have to protect yourself. You have to protect your family, which means you can't let just anyone into that family. You can't feed everyone when you are a single parent. You can't pay everyone's heat bill while they sit in your house trying to figure their life out. Also, I'm becoming a lot less inclined to accept these defective attributes the older they get. At some point I think you have to suck it up and get with the program. There isn't another option, but to work. Even though there is this chance that you can make it, you will just be living off of other people who do work. When you are 19 that can pan out for awhile. When you are almost thirty this shit is not cute anymore. I still think people who are introspective and a bit damaged have the broader perspective a lot of the time, but when you stop progressing you are just immature.. literally.

I have come into some situations lately where maybe I should have judged people. Maybe I should have gone along with the general consensus. It made me realize that you cannot hold everyone to the same standard. That is what seems fair, but it's not. Not all people are equal. What I am capable of, my morals, and obligations are not equal to everyone else's. The fair thing to do is understand that we are all different, and work with those differences. Judgment in that aspect does not seem like such an awful thing. I'm not saying that one person is necessarily better than another. But there are people who I can leave my wallet around and people who I cannot. There are people who I am going to trust with my family and those who I am not. Judgement does not always mean that you are throwing someone out because you don't approve of them. It can mean that you are taking them for what they are. Sometimes a liar is a liar. Sometimes, even if they want to and say they will, people cannot commit to what you are asking of them. That doesn't mean you cant be in my life, but it isn't all black and white. There has to be levels of our involvement. I cannot rely on everyone to be what I want them to be. Dear god, I hope no one would expect that of me. The more I think about it, it is a terrible way to be. Blindly wandering around under the impression that everyone will work the same way as you. Not judging people has made me loose touch with the difference between fairness and equality. All this time I thought I was being fair, but I was truly giving people expectations they could never live up to. I don't think you can get more unfair than that.