Every few days I come home and there they are. He freshens them up, he adds more, it just doesn’t seem to stop. They’re just always there. 

It’s not what you think. He knows how much I love flowers, how they make me instantly smile, how the smell lifts my spirit when I’m not noticing. He’s watched me deteriorate these past couple of months and he thinks of me and cares about me and wants to do something, anything, to help. Sitting helplessly by as I cry and sink further into depression he reaches for the only thing he can do with impunity. Buy me flowers.

This man who has no connection to me except that he loves my sister. This man who has had more problems and abuse in his life than seems possible. He thinks about me and goes out and picks a beautiful bouquet because, “Kathy needs a hug.” 

And when I walk into my room and see them I immediately start crying and think, “I am so not worthy of all that trouble.” That is absolutely what I think, no exaggeration. And I immediately start thinking of how I can “make it up to him”. As if I’ve done something wrong in allowing my grief to overtake me because now he has to do something about it.

Jordan Peterson’s Big Five personality assessment says I’m in the 80th percentile for Agreeableness, 66th percentile for Compassion, and 85th percentile for politeness.

The positive(ish) side of these three dimensions is that:

• I’m  nice, compliant, nurturing, kind, conciliatory, cooperative, warm, considerate, forgiving, accepting, flexible, gentle, patient, empathetic, caring, have a noticeably soft side
• I look for the best in others, am interpersonally tolerant, do not like to see other people’s feelings get hurt, and am much concerned about the emotional state of others.
• I’m interested in the problems of other people, and other living things and am concerned about helping other people avoid negative emotion.
• I make time and do kind things for others (even when doing so may interfere with fulfilling my own needs and interests).
• I am deferential to authority, generally obedient, respectful, and hate to appear (or be) pushy.
• I am uncomfortable challenging other people and will try diligently to avoid conflict, and have a more intense desire than average to steer clear of confrontations or fights.

The negative side is that:

• I am naively trusting, have a tendency to avoid conflict (which leads me to dissemble and hide what I think), and can be taken advantage of.
• I will lose arguments (or even avoid discussions) and tend not to be very good at bargaining for myself or negotiating for more recognition or power (which can lead to resentment and hidden anger.
• I tend to avoid or reduce conflict (and will sacrifice medium- to long-term stability for the sake of short-term peace), which means that problems that should be solved in the present accumulate counter-productively across time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these things and how spot on they are. I can see the whole span of my life spent doing these very things. It’s unnerving to see myself so easily pinpointed by a simple quiz when I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure myself out. And even more upsetting is that I can see with ridiculous clarity how, based on these traits, I got to where I am now. Even as I child I can see how these traits guided every decision I every made.

So the other day I was at the car wash sitting on a patio chair waiting for my car to get cleaned, when a very good looking man passed by me and said, “You have great hair!”

I immediately thought of my tendency to be agreeable, my reluctance to graciously accept flowers from my sister’s boyfriend and countless other ways in which I try not to be pushy or selfish or will deflect compliments onto others so that I don’t seem arrogant. And instead I just look straight at him with an honestly appreciative smile and said a very heart-felt, “Thank you.”

He found a chair too and sat there waiting for his lime green Lamborghini to get detailed. I didn’t feel the desire to make small talk or to capitalize on this opportunity. I had been sitting there reading old emails from my ex and trying very hard to hold back the tears and was in no shape to be talking to anyone, least of all a handsome man with a nice smile. I barely made it to my car before the tears started falling as it is. But when I drove away he waved at me and I waved back and for the first time I thought that maybe this was doable. Maybe I could turn my personality around given enough time. And for that one moment I felt content, confident and happy. I pulled over and texted my sister, “Am at the car wash and some guy passed by me and said, “You have great hair! Yup, I still got it.”