Authority

Authority is something I have always struggled with in one way or another.

When I was young (under 13/14) any authority figure intimidated me. I was deathly afraid of making the people unhappy with me, and I would do anything in my power to make them happy. For some reason if said authority figure was a man, their intimidation level was nearly 10 fold compared to normal.

This was something that agitated me immensely, but I didn't know how to stop it. It was an unhealthy fear of people "in charge" and I couldn't seem to shake it...

Something clicked when I hit puberty. I no longer let myself get intimidated so easily (by people other than my grandparents) and I started not giving a shit as to if the people "in charge" liked what I was doing or not. This wasn't immediate, but it was fast; I decided I was going to use my strong will to no longer fear people who tried to intimidate me.

I still struggle with respecting authority. I can fake it at work and things, but that's only because I need my job, and my bosses could quickly take it from me. When it comes to authority in other places (Dad, D, church, etc) I fight it.

I grew up in an abusive household. One thing I learned there, though, was that boundaries aren't solid. One day I wasn't allowed to do/say something, the next day it was fine, the next it was funny. Rules only lasted a week, unless Nana decided the rule was valid randomly in a totally unrelated incident.

I still tend to live in the "rules are flexible" kind of mindset. Make a rule at ALL flexible for me, and I take advantage of it. I test rules and the flexibility of them whenever possible. You'd think after a few times of seeing a rule is concrete that I would nod and see the rule as concrete; this would be an inaccurate assumption. It takes a lot of poking and prodding for me to finally understand that a certain rule is a RULE and not simply a random idea.

Ugh... just warm up the straight jacket before you put it on me please. -.-