How To Deal With A High School Kitty

I had a dream last night about a girl from high school, let’s call her Kitty.  She was one of those archetypal high school villains- pretty, loud, cruel, difficult, dictatorial, and somehow popular but you don’t know why.  Anyone in my class from high school will immediately recognize to whom I am referring.  I don’t believe that Kitty could have possibly had any true friends in high school, although she would jump around between a few acquaintances every now and again.  I understand that in high school we all aren’t yet very good at relationships, and for some that skill set never develops.  In high school we barely know ourselves, if at all, and we are at the early stages of practicing how to actually be relationships, friendship or otherwise.  I’d give her a break for that.  I gave her a break many times in high school, at least I tried to.  Maybe her low self-esteem led to cruelty.  Maybe her brash declarations were because she never felt heard at home.  Maybe she was just a borderline sociopathic, mean-spirited, manipulative, genuine bitch.  I’ll never know.

One day at school, Kitty pushed one particular girl too far, and this time a brave, heroic woman fought back.  She doled out fists in the face and took fistfuls of hair from Kitty.  In my memory, the applause echoed in the hallway and continued well after the girls were pushed down the hall toward the vice principal’s office.  I don’t generally support violence, yet how does one admonish foul behavior when she takes no notice in the boundaries people set with her over and over again?  How does one respond when you’re in a setting and are forced to be near and even work with people like this?  I didn’t know then so I never crossed her personally, I never fought back when she aimed her pointed spear of verbal brutality at me, but I kind of wish I had rather than absorb her action at personal cost of my self-esteem.

Returning to my dream last night, Kitty was executing a flamboyant rant in my direction, cruelly declaring all the reasons I should be shamed and excluded from society, as high school villains do to nearly everyone at some point.  In my dream I just hauled off and punched her in her pretty, delicate, perfect little jaw.  It felt damn good.

When I awoke this morning, I did feel a bit guilty.  Maybe it was my mother’s disappointed voice in my head, or that I genuinely don’t think punching someone in the face is a decent tactical way to “set a boundary”, or maybe it was the good old fashioned Catholic guilt that plagues me upon waking every morning.  All I know is that this morning I realized I can’t expect myself to constantly be able to show every human being empathy all of the time.  I’m not the Dalai Lama.  I didn’t have years of intense and consistent training since birth to guide my mind toward peace in every situation.  I was guided by a religion of dogma where one was expected to behave in certain ways and shamed for having normal human responses.  Instead of understanding our own minds and responding with self-compassion, we were led toward repression, passive aggression, and even full on aggression instead of peace.  But that, my friends, is a whole other post.

The point of this whole post, maybe the entire dream, is that I finally have my own permission to grant myself compassion in this arena: if I can’t figure someone out in a way that leads to empathy, that’s okay.  What’s more, if I keep struggling to find compassion for someone and instead lean toward repression, passive aggression, I’m doing much more damage to myself and those around me.  I need to be more aware of when this happens and return to a state of self-compassion first before deciding on a solid boundary setting plan or whether to walk away altogether.  I’m not always going to think or behave like a holy human being.  Good grief, talk about pressure!  Instead, this time anyway, I can refrain from feeling guilt when I think to myself, “Fuck that girl.”  I get to enjoy the relief that I’ll never have to deal with her again and I get to choose how I respond to anyone I come across that resembles her.  How will I respond?  I have no idea right now, but I intend to respond with self-compassion first and then I get to choose.  I GET TO CHOOSE.  And that feels damn good too.