Daily writing prompt

Are you a good judge of character?

View all responses

I’ll be the first to admit that the answer to this question is no. I’m not a good judge of character. As a matter of fact, most of my assumptions of how people will act, what will happen in certain situations, ETC is wrong. This unfortunately is actually what leads to most of my anxiety when I don’t reach mom on the phone for long periods of time or when my bus is late for me, ETC. Pretty much, anything that has gone wrong for me in the past has lead me to believe that the situation is worse than it is. For example, when the bus is excessively late for me, I will believe it’s never coming and this spikes my anxiety where others in the same situation would know better and understand that it’s just late. If I can’t get an answer from mom, a lot of times I believe she no longer loves me despite everything she does for me and unfortunately sometimes I tend to forget I no longer have a girlfriend but yet I lose sight of reality and believe that certain aspects of my teenage years have resurfaced and this has contributed to the reason why my mother missed the call from me. I will find myself having anxiety attacks which either last until she returns my call or until I realize that I currently don’t have a girlfriend so there’s no way that those aspects would have resurfaced. However, one thing this does is put to rest any question of whether I should have another girlfriend, (as everybody knows that the answer has gone back and forth between yes I should and no I shouldn’t,) as I am able to easily come to the conclusion that having one wouldn’t be a good idea as my fake one is causing me real problems. With this in mind, having another one would be a bad idea as it would just lead to the same problems I had as a teenager, ones that nearly resulted in police involvement when they originally occurred. At my age, I would never be able to recover from the consequences of what happened back then and I would definitely be arrested. Therefore, having a girlfriend is something I’m actually afraid of. This may be getting a little off topic but I have to be honest in saying that there’s something that nobody really knows about me. I have chosen to include this because it does tie into the question somewhat. Though I’ve had my moments of happiness, I’ve never really been in a full good mood since I moved away from mom. This may be a key reason for every anxiety attack, (and trust me I’ve had my fair share of those, specifically at times when mom is unavailable for me but this is even more frequent with the added element of my fake girlfriend.) However, the fact does remain that my behaviour and overall demeanor wasn’t as bad when I was living with mom and to this day, it is only this good at times when she is present or I’m able to reach her on the phone. I’m going to be completely honest in saying this. Call me childish if you want but mom can easily influence my overall mood despite how old I get. Without her around, my mood changes negatively. This makes it even harder to accept the fact that one day she will not be around anymore. This is a scary fact for me to think about…one that I don’t want to think about until it actually happens. Even at that though, I know I will still not be ready for it when it happens. Face it, my mother is the most important person in my life, (whether she wants to be or not is really irrelevant,) and while the truth is that no I’m not good judge of character without her influence, there have been times where I’m able to think rationally but these times are limited to those occasions when she is present. I really don’t know how I will take it when I receive that phone call or text message, whatever means of communication someone decides to use to deliver the sad news but I know one thing for sure. I will not take this positively and I will also never be a good judge of character again if she’s not around. She has such a big impact on my life that maybe when that time comes, I won’t even want to speak anymore, much less pass judgement on how someone acts. To end this response I will say this. The answer to this question is a maybe which depends on if mom is around me or not. As it stands now, whether I am or I’m not a good judge of character depends on if she’s there or not. I know it won’t always be this way but I will say something I’ve said numerous times when addressing this topic to my friends and people around me. I only want to think about that and deal with it when it happens.