No More Tears

I messed up at work today.  Big time.  It was bad enough that our manager had to give out a free meal to five people.  I was so embarrassed and miserable, I was fighting back tears the whole rest of the night.

That’s one of the things I absolutely hate about myself—how easily the waterworks come on.  I know very well that one of the words people use most frequently to describe me is “cute.”  I’m five feet tall, with a round face, long blonde hair and baby blue eyes.  With all this, I don’t need anything else to prevent people from taking me seriously.  Yet, to make the cuteness total overkill, I have a problem with tears.

What makes it worse is when people are nice to me about it.  I realize that it sounds terribly ungrateful to complain about this, but it’s so true.  When I’ve messed up, I take it out on myself hard.  I have very high standards for myself and making dumb mistakes is not to be tolerated.  Thus, tears.  I can't help them.  When people are kind about my mistakes, it makes me feel worse.  I don’t feel that I deserve their kindness.  The best way for me to recover my composure is to not look anyone in the eye, to not say anything, and at best disappear and just breathe for a little while.

I fought against this impulse all night, and I managed not to cry.  It was a near thing once or twice, but I was bound and determined that I was not going to make myself more of a liability.  I do NOT want people to cater to me or feel sorry for me, and I certainly don’t want them to feel like they have to comfort me.  So from now on, I will take my lumps, put them behind me, and come back with one hundred and ten percent, and I will not shed one single tear over anything that doesn’t deserve it.