I real­ized that I never wrote about this, after re-reading the entry I wrote last Friday. In fact, I had been think­ing about this sub­ject for the past week, the past month, the past half year. Yet, I had never come to a con­clu­sion, had never been firm on how I felt, until con­sid­er­ing atten­dance at Aaron’s new years party (with a lit­tle hand from talk­ing Trolley through some stuff, along with com­ing to terms with my own issues).

My intol­er­ance has always been an issue in the past. An issue for improve­ment, that is, and I’ll be the first to admit it, albeit with a help­ful reminder from John. I’ve always known how intol­er­ant I am, although I never paid much atten­tion to the fact because I con­sciously never let it get as far as being unable to social­ize with peo­ple (never let it get in the way of every­day life, to the point of neu­ro­sis). There are some instances where I’ve actu­ally been proud of how intol­er­ant I am, because it makes me feel stronger, more respect­ful about the com­pany I actu­ally do choose to spend my time with. I want all my friends to know how much I gen­er­ally hate peo­ple, and that they’re AWESOME enough to meet even my high stan­dards. Hell, I even almost decided not to asso­ciate with John at one point, but real­ized that I was mak­ing a huge mis­take, clouded by my own prob­lems at the time.

I digress. I’ve become less afraid of my intol­er­ance. A long time ago I real­ized that other peo­ple have every right to be them­selves, and I’m prob­a­bly the last per­son that they should be chang­ing for. Hence the quest for my own self-improvement. However, I’ve only recently real­ized that I have just as much right to be me. That means every right to be intol­er­ant. As intol­er­ant as I want to fuck­ing be.

The issue can be exten­dend to rela­tion­ships in gen­eral, dat­ing or oth­er­wise. If two peo­ple can’t come to a rea­son­able agreeance on some­thing, then some­times all that can be done is rec­og­niz­ing it and accept­ing it. If these dif­fer­ences can’t be lived with, then the only thing left to do is part ways on ami­ca­ble terms. One per­son has just as much right to be them­selves as the other.

And if it just so hap­pens that I find myself in unpleas­ant com­pany, I’ll be the first to bow out. I’d rather spend qual­ity time with the peo­ple I like, than share them with peo­ple I don’t, and the last thing I want to do is force the peo­ple I care about to make a deci­sion between me and some­one else. So I make the deci­sion for myself. No one is at fault. Some peo­ple just don’t mix. As long as it never gets to the point of harm­ing the rela­tion­ships I want to have, there’s no prob­lem. If this means that I may occa­sion­ally have to be in the com­pany of peo­ple who make me uncom­fort­able, for impor­tant events or what­not, then so be it. My friends are worth the unpleas­ant­ness, and I know that they under­stand me enough to accept my intolerance.

The issue becomes a non-issue.