I’ve been disappointed by people before.

People I loved and people that I trusted.

That has happened more than once and yet, at the same time,

there were also people who have surprised me.

They have made me feel loved and have made me feel special.

I’ve met enough who I know I’d keep for a lifetime while I’ve also met people whom I want to edit out of my life.

(It’s just sad though that the people you want to keep are the ones who are gone too soon and the ones you’d like to forget about are the ones who stay longer than they should)

I was once again rereading The Purpose Driven Life and it said something about loving the unlovable. For some foreign reason, the Lord places these people in our lives in order for us to learn how to love our neighbors unselfishly.

That, my dear friend is one of the hardest things to accomplish. Some people go through their lives never learning to love or forgive.

In high school, I wasn’t such a “people person”. In fact, I hated half of the people I met. It may be embarrassing to talk about this now, but I guess the main reason for that was because of my insecurities. I failed to see the good on people because I didn’t see any good in myself.

Instead of appreciating people for whatever good traits they had, I criticized people.

I was so insecure that I only noticed the negative.

Trust me, that wasn’t the way to live.

Since I expected people to deal with me in a certain (negative) way, that was how they responded to me.

And I only blamed them, never myself.

I guess that was my “people crises” period.

I thought that period would never end.

I finally got over myself and my insecurities. I mean seriously, if I didn’t appreciate myself and love myself, who the else would?

Not much, I bet.

But getting over our little insecurities and getting rid of those crazy, doubting thoughts out of our mind is never easy.

So I stopped focusing on myself. It was such a relief to stop dwelling so much on what people thought of me, how I looked, how much I weighed (a favorite topic for most of the people on my “CHUCK LIST”) or how I acted.

I just lived.

I suddenly wasn’t scared anymore.

When I finally got over myself, things became easier. People became nicer, easier to deal with.

I’m not saying that there aren’t crummy people out there (this isn’t Disneyland honey and even they had villains) but there’s a way to avoid dealing with them so harshly.

As Morrie Schwartz said, “People are only mean when threatened”

I guess this entry only proves that I got over my people crises stage. I think finally, I found my place in the world. Therefore, I’ve found my inner peace.

I finally have something that people can faze by a nasty comment.

I’ve finally appreciated who I am thus making me appreciate people and the world more.

And you know what?

Since then, life has just been so full of awesome surprises:)