Most of the things that make me Kyla, I’m okay with.

I’m fine with needing to know when and how things are going to go forward so I can relax. I stage managed for five years, it’s engrained. I’m okay with needing more time to myself than other people I know. I’m good about admitting when I can’t go out because I’m broke for now, and I’m really good about laughing at it. I’m fine with tripping, stumbling, pausing, and gathering my thoughts when I need to. I’m okay with not having the right thing to say, too. I’m good with being into things that no one else I know is into- like knitting and making jams & jellies, I’m okay with being the primary coordinator/planner/instigator of my friends, and I’m happy with my body.

I’m always trying to be okay with all parts of myself. To be better than fine- to be loving and to have a sense of humor about myself. These things are the jumble of elbows and knees that make me who I am, and at the very least I can always learn from them & change them.

This weekend I watched the movie District 9, or I should say I watched the first 40 mins of it, and the resulting spin out I had made me think about the things I’m not okay with. The camps in the movie were too much like hearing my friend talk about her husband’s life as a refugee from Kenya, and when they started drilling into the dude? I’m sorry, but they lost me. There is nothing that can make me care about the end of that movie after they tried to smash my head into a wall to elicit my empathy. I’m not dumb, I know an allegory about apartheid when I see one, and I don’t need a torture scene to care about it. But the whole experience of reacting really strongly against something reminded me of how there is some content in movies (and in life) that I just don’t handle well.

It makes me feel like a wuss to say it, but I definitely have deal breakers and I know exactly what they are.

My No Questions Asked, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, Deal Breakers:

1. Heights, especially open air.
2. People or animals in pain.
3. Horror and gore.
4. Things Jumping Out From Behind Other Things
5. Rights and freedoms being taken away from people

So how does this effect my life? Well, I love watching Fringe, but it’s stressful for me because it hits #2,#3, #4 and (a lot of the time) #5. Roller coasters are offenders on #1, and because I can’t control them they also hit #5. The ‘ride’ coasters at Disney brilliantly add  Things Jumping Out From Behind Other Things into the mix, making them definitely out for me.

Eating meat infringes on #2 & #3, so I’m vegetarian and the only dairy I eat is a little butter in baking- not because of a technicality, but because I find pretty much everything about the meat industry disturbing. The slasher porn scary movies that they’re making these days run the gamut of my deal breakers, as do psychological thrillers, reporting about Guantanamo Bay (Cuba’s highest point is at a higher sea level than I am, it counts), and watching ghost hunters (ghosts float, it counts).

And the end result is that I’m a bit of a wuss. I can be too sensitive to the news or to stories my friends tell, and I have a really hard time getting things out of my head once they’re in there.

But being a wuss also reminds me that I’m engaged & paying attention. Being (extremely) fast to empathize with pain might mean I can’t watch a slasher flick with you, but it means I am right there with you when you go through trouble in your life. It means ethical issues don’t just matter to me when they’re in front of me, but that they stay with me & cause me to make changes that last longer than five minutes. Being a wuss reminds me that I somewhere over the past few years I stopped caring about looking cool, and started caring about responding honestly to  what’s in my heart.

So I’m moving being a wuss from my Things That Bother Me About Kyla list, into my Adorably Quirky If Sometimes Frustrating Things That Make Me Who I Am list. At the very least, if you roll with me you’ll feel really, really tough.

That has to count for something, right?