You know how you can tell who your true friends are, the people who really care about you? They tell you things that you don't want to hear. They're honest with you, even if you don't want to hear it. They know that you need to hear it.
This happened to me two days ago and I keep thinking about it. For a while now, there have been strains in a few of my relationships, ones that should have been easily avoided. Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm surprised that they happened. But the weight of how I've been treated by these people has been keeping me down and affecting me. I'm constantly thinking about it because the pain is so raw and I honestly can't believe that these people would be willing to hurt me like that.
So as I'm venting to my best friend, she tells me that I'm the one who is hurting myself. She points out that these people have shown me exactly who they are on multiple occasions and that the pain I'm feeling is coming from the fact that I'm hoping that these people will change. But they won't. And to be honest, I didn't want to hear that but the more that I thought about it, I realized that she was right. I'm allowing them to hurt me and in doing so, I'm only hurting myself because they're not losing any sleep over their behavior. Only I am.
I'm someone that feels things very deeply, someone that was raised to be a good person that considered other peoples' feelings. I would never intentionally hurt someone else or make them feel the way that I have been lately. That's why I can't wrap my brain around this situation and I keep waiting for it to change. But it's not going to because these people aren't me; they weren't raised like I was. These people don't care about me. These people don't deserve me in their lives and they definitely don't deserve to have me obsessing over their behavior towards me.
I've asked quite a few people for advice about how to handle this and every person keeps telling me the same thing. They tell me to put my guard up and protect my feelings. They tell me to toughen up and put a fence around my heart so that these people can't hurt me anymore. They tell me to cut these people out of my life and if I ever do see them again, be cold to them. And I know that they're right but it feels so weird to go against my natural instincts. I always want to fix problems. I always want to see the best in people. I always want to give people more chances than they probably deserve. But at the end of the day, all that I get is wasted time and heartache.
It hurts me to know that the actions of other people are forcing me to change. I don't feel like that's fair but I guess that's life. It isn't fair sometimes. And if being cold sometimes and learning not to care as much is going to help me stay mentally healthy, then that's what I'm going to have to do. Obsessing over this has taken up too much of my life already and I need to focus on what I can change, which is how I approach these types of situations. I have to toughen up. My son needs my time and energy, not these people that do nothing but break my heart and cause me to question what I ever did to deserve such treatment.
I consider myself to be an extremely passionate person who wears their heart on their sleeves. So training myself to be tougher is going to be really hard for me but I need to set an example for my son. He needs to know that nobody else should ever make him question his self-worth. He needs to know that protecting yourself doesn't make you a bad person. He needs to know that negative people are toxic and that negativity is contagious. And he needs to know that I'll do anything to protect us from people that don't have our best interests at heart. So even though I'm very sensitive, feel things on a deep level and have difficulty letting things go, I feel as if I've got no choice but to try to be stronger than I've ever been. Holding onto the past and holding onto people that have already let go is not going to propel me forward. From now on, I'm going to be much more selective of the people that I let into my inner circle. I'm gonna do whatever I can to stop hurting myself and stop other people from hurting me. It isn't worth it and it's making life tougher than it already is. And I officially don't have time for it anymore.
I'm only sorry that it took me this long to accept the truth: that when people show you who they really are, you have to believe them.
-Chelsea
