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Last night, a friend and I were talking about change. I declared, rather vehemently, that people don’t change, that even when they think they’re changing, they stay the same. He was unconvinced, and I gave a rather poor argument in defense of my statement.

Thinking about it today bugged me. Why do I have this idea that people can’t really change? I’ve changed in a lot of ways. How? Well, I’m more confident than I was in the past. Less naive. Less introverted.

But, I think these are changes that are associated with growing up. I didn’t make conscious efforts to change, I was just forced into situations where those flaws had no option but to resign themselves to years and experience. They weren’t those fundamental flaws that I try to pretend don’t exist.

I’ve been burned a lot. Often, multiple times by the same person. And it always turned into multiple times because, after the first burn, they insisted that they’d changed. “I’ve changed. It won’t happen again.”

And so, usually, it really looks like they’ve changed. You can visibly see that there’s been an effort put forth to change that fundamental flaw – selfishness, lying, other things. But, eventually, they fall back into the habit of those things, and then comes burn number two – the one that scars.

I think that’s the difference – little things we can change. I can be more open with people if I want to. I can be nicer, keep my sarcastic, snarky remarks in check.

But there are three things about myself that I keep coming back to, no matter how much effort I’ve put into changing them. These are my fundamental, completely ingrained flaws.

One. I’m terrified of rejection.

Terrified. I’ve written about this one before, because it’s the one that bugs me the most and has the most direct impact on my day-to-day life.

As a recap, though, in case you don’t feel like clicking on the link, I have a history of being afraid to ask for anything. My earliest memory of this stupid fear dates back to elementary school, when I was afraid to ask the duties at recess to go inside and buy an apple. The fear of rejection kept me from applying to more colleges that I wasn’t sure if I could get into, from running for student government, applying for better jobs, etc.

It used to be even worse than I’ve described. There have been points in my life where I am so afraid of rejection that I refused to call customer service, talk to counselors, or simple things like that.

In recent years, it usually manifests itself in things like following up on job applications and resumes. I’m scared to call employers after interviews or after submitting a resume. I always have this terrible feeling that I’m bugging them.

Also, I’ve found that a lot of my social hang-ups stem from this – I have a hard time inviting even people I’m used to hanging out with to go out. I’ll usually sit around, waiting for an invitation, maybe hint at it if I’d like to hang out. But I’m rarely the one who initiates hang-outage. It also makes me wary of over-staying a welcome, or submitting ideas during the ritualistic “so what do you wanna do?” routine.

Two. I’m incredibly lazy.

I hate cleaning. I’m not very good at cleaning up after myself. I’m not good at working at anything that doesn’t have a clear, tangible result, endpoint, or product.

It’s important to differentiate – I have a great work ethic. When it comes to jobs, I’m there whenever, wherever, working as late or hard as needed to get a job done. BUT, with things like writing, learning my stupid guitar, or things like that, I’m not good at it.

This one is also really well ingrained. I remember sitting in my totally cluttered room as a little girl. It was a beautiful summer day, and I wanted to go swimming, but my mom said I couldn’t until my room was clean. I sat in that room forever, not cleaning. I sat and tried to devise ways to make it look like I had cleaned my room, without actually cleaning my room. I even started drawing pictures of my things, totally organized and put away, to hang in front of the mess.

Talk about dumb. A lot of times, my laziness gets intertwined with my fear of rejection. Sometimes they’re probably equally responsible for things like failing to follow through on jobs and things like that.

Three. I lie.

Yeah. There’s the truth for you.

I don’t lie about big things. For one, I typically don’t do things that I have to lie about, and I’m too loyal to tell big, hurtful lies to my friends and family. When I do lie, it never has any kind of maliciousness behind it.

But I do lie about things I didn’t do. Random fact about me: I probably got extensions on 60% of my college papers because I told professors that I had some kind of computer issue. “I sent you the paper, the e-mail must not have gone through.” “My printer is out of the ink, I’m going to go buy some today.”

Lying is something I’ve done to cover up for the holes left by the first two fundamental flaws. It’s the thing I feel the most awful about. In the past, I have lied to people I’ve loved. It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever had.

My first lie was to cover up my laziness. Another sunny day, the same messy room. I was standing in the entrance of our kitchen in my old house, asking my mom if I could go swimming.

“Is your room clean?”

I paused, studying the wallpaper. Then it dawned on me – she won’t know if I tell her it’s clean. And voila – I liar was born.

These are things I can’t permanently change. Everyone has a flaw, or two, or three that is so far ingrained that the only way to counter them is to recognize them, look them full in the face, and work to counter them. And then, it’s not change – it’s an effort to be better. I slip up sometimes, so I haven’t changed, no matter how much I want to. All I can do is get back up and try to be better tomorrow.

Maybe people can successfully counter those kinds of flaws to the point of submission, to the point where they won’t slip up anymore. I hope I get there, at least with the lying thing. But I know that it will still be a gut instinct. That instinct won’t change.

So, yeah. That’s what I meant.