Generally speaking, I’d say I tend to be a lover, not a fighter. For one thing, I hate conflict. I hate the icky feeling I get in my gut when I’m mad at someone and especially when I know they’re mad at me. It overtakes my every waking thought, and never in a constructive way. (Admittedly, I’m still working on accepting that I can’t please everyone.) But more than anything, I just don’t want to be mean. At least in my experience, being mean is never conducive to an actual satisfactory solution. Not to mention it just makes me plain old feel bad.
Generally speaking, stirring things up is the last thing I ever want to do. Unless, of course, you’ve hurt someone I care about. If you’ve hurt someone I care about, I go full mama bear. It’s weird, actually. I’ll go full mama bear protecting any of my loved ones, even say, my own mother. Because here’s the thing about being more of a lover than a fighter: it means I love really, really hard. When I care about someone, I super-duper care about them. I’ll protect them at all costs. In other words, it creates a side of me that will go full mama bear any time anyone I love is threatened. Which, funny enough, turns me into a fighter.
Okay, but here’s yet another contradiction: I won’t actually fight you. I still hate conflict and confrontation way too much for that. I’ll just...be angry with you. Like, really hard. I mean, you should definitely be intimidated because I mean business. I won’t just be a little mad. I’ll be mega-mad. Not mad enough to say anything to you in any sort of actual aggressive confrontation, but mad enough to imagine numerous different ways I could confront you to prevent you from ever hurting my loved one again. I know, terrifying. Watch out.
Look, I know it sounds super wimpy. “Oh yeah, I’m super protective. Something bad happens to you? Don’t worry. I’ll protect you with my saltiness.” But, in my defense, I’ve thought this one out. In every situation in which I’ve felt like I could just yell and scream at whoever brought harm to someone I care about, I’ve had to force myself to see through the raw emotion of it and realize what was truly best for my friend or family member. In no circumstance was it ever a mistake to avoid the screaming-match and opt for just the simple service of being there as support for my loved one. Again, my theory — that being mean never helps to solve anything--holds up. That being said, if I ever find myself physically at the side of a friend amongst a confrontation already underway, I make no promises that my fighter side will remain under wraps. Until then, I’m a lover — yes, a protective one at that — but not a fighter.
