Top 4 sentences I’ll never forget

I’m going to shamelessly copy off Christine‘s blog entry titled Sentences I’ll never forget and give you my own list of sentences I will never be able to shake.

1) “I wasn’t thinking that, you came up with that on your own”

My mother said this to me one time when we were together and I may have been eating something fatty, to which she gave a disapproving look. She has implied that I am overweight many times in the past, so that time I preemptively told her that I didn’t care what she thought and that I was happy with my weight. She proceeded to say that she had not opened her mouth at all, and that if I felt self conscious about my weight, it came from within me, not from her. And she was right: I was very self-conscious about my weight. I may have been right in thinking she was disapproving of my over eating, but that was irrelevant: *I* was the one who accused myself of over eating.

This was an eye opening concept: everything you think is coming from inside your head. You can infer feelings and thoughts from someone else’s body language or subtle comments, but in reality, if something is not sitting well with you, you should internalize it and take ownership for your own feelings and not blame others for them.

2) “Why do you feel the need to make a scene?”

I was seeing a therapist when I was in college. She was a very nice and very insightful woman called Dolores. I always thought that if my life was a sitcom, my therapist’s name would for sure be “Dolores” (it means “pain” in Spanish). Anyways, one time I was running late for our appointment and I sprinted up 4 flights of stairs and ran right into her office completely out of breath and sweating a little. I was trying to explain what had held me up as I was trying to catch my breath. She sat there quietly waiting for me to finish talking, and then she asked me why I felt the need to make a scene. I told her I wasn’t trying to, that I was genuinely tired and out of breath. Whatever I tried to tell myself about that particular scenario, I realized later on that I fully agreed with her.

We think that making a scene (however justified it may be) will incite feelings of sympathy from the other person towards you, when in reality people can see right through your drama and they don’t find it relatable, only annoying.

Armed with that new valuable life lesson, I vowed to never make a scene when I went into her office again. I still try to apply it to my daily life, and even though it is difficult not to express my true feelings sometimes, I always feel bad afterwards when I have given out too much emotional information that helps the situation nothing, and simply makes me look dramatic and desperate.

3) “I’m not going anywhere”

After 7 failed relationships, I was under the understanding that boys come and go, that I will always have a wandering eye, and that I am just simply not the settling down kind. Then one day, an incredible man came into my life and simply said those words to me while we were going through a rough patch: “I’m not going anywhere.” He could have said many things in that situation, and I do mean he could have given me a speech… but he didn’t. He was quiet, listening, sympathizing, and then just said those words to me. I felt understood and taken-care of. It all just clicked: this is the man I’ll be spending the rest of my life with. Such simple words, such a strong feeling.

4) “That needs a good biting”

I stopped biting my nails in college. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was a nail biter.

Once, when I was little, I was holding my father’s hand and noticed that one little piece of skin was protruding from the side of his fingernail. I pointed it out to him and asked him what he was going to do about it. He said “All that needs is a good biting!” and he proceeded to bite the little piece of skin off. I was appalled!!! What kind of a person would give me such a hard time over biting my nails and then go and do it himself???

I never forgot that! It just comes to show you that being a good example for your kids is not just about telling them what to do right, it’s about doing it yourself because they WILL notice that you don’t do as you preach. Now, I understand that there was absoultely nothing wrong with my father biting off a piece of loose skin, even now I do it. The lesson came in knowing that children get easily confused in what constitutes right and wrong because they live in a black and white world: you should do this, not do this. So, when you have kids, just remember that it’s not enough to say things, you have to follow them yourself as well.