Shifting Slowly

We are so egotistical that even when something we read is bad we think it’s about us. We think and make everything about us. If I’m scrolling through facebook and see someone write something offensive or post a quote that is trying to state something they can’t seem to say, I immediately will go through the recesses of my mind and figure out if at any point I did something to this person and will then focus on a random time, maybe 8 months ago and think, shit, they’re talking about me. Why do we do this? Why are we so egotistical and think it’s always about us? Instead, we should be asking ourselves why we’re making it about us? Why does the quote affect us? Maybe we should wonder if instead the quote is not about us per se but it for some reason affects us and maybe is a reflection of something we need to address for ourselves.

I’ll never forget one time an ex-friend of mine posted something. We had been on and off with our friendship. Talking here and there and just not in sync for a bit, about a week or so and she posted something on Myspace at the time and I immediately took offense to it but I immediately asked her, is it about me?  And her response was if you want it to be, it can.  Instead of facing up to what she wrote and just saying, yes, it is, she decided to continue to hide behind her words and not tell me outright what the matter was.

This went on for many years after that. She hid behind a screen whenever she needed to say something. It got to a point of frustration. I hate hiding behind screens. I’m beyond the screen now. I have hidden behind my words put to paper for so many years that it gets to a point that you just want to not hide what you need to say any longer.  You want to yell it from the rooftop and why shouldn’t you be able to?

If something is bothering you about someone, why aren’t you telling them? If friendship means anything, shouldn’t you be honest and let them know how you feel? Don’t your feelings count? Even if the person doesn’t own up to how they made you feel, you don’t go in expressing your feelings assuming they’re going to understand.  You do it for yourself. You do it because if you don’t you’ll bottle it up and give them permission to keep behaving that way towards you, and that’s not right either.

I held in so much of how people made me feel for so many years that I lost friendships from evening to morning.  Friendships that I had for 10 or more years, I just let go and shut the door, literally on them, because I was more afraid of their reaction to my hurt that it was easier than sounding needy and vulnerable.  How I regret so many of those talks I needed to have with those friends, maybe things would have been different. Maybe I would have saved some and made more memories.

I’ve learned that when people are trying to hurt you through a post or some other way they are expressing themselves behind a screen, it’s a cry for attention. A cry for, hey, you, you did this thing to annoy me but I’m too coward or to egotistical to call you up on the phone and sound vulnerable so I found this really fucked up quote instead and hope it’ll penetrate you enough to call me out. Then we can fight and argue and you can tell me I was an asshole and we can say all these hurtful things to one another, not really having accomplished anything but more hurt and pain and well, maybe, we can work it out?

However, after all that pain and hurt words, things change no?  I know they do for me. I know that things are said in the heat of the moment but it doesn’t make it ok to make up and think those words you shouted at me are forgiven or forgotten. Because it is in the heat of the moment that we say hurtful and oftentimes, true things, no?

We need more face to face honesty. More vulnerability without worrying what you’re vulnerability will make you “look like”.  I can guarantee you this, I can guarantee you that vulnerability brings out the true you. It is what we were created with.  God created us to be vulnerable, to rely on Him and so we were born with this trait. We were born to rely on our tribe, our people, our family, our friends and if one of those people hurt you, you need to be vulnerable enough to tell them so that you can restore your circle.

You need to know that your feelings matter. They do. Your feelings are true to you and how someone made you feel is true to you and staying true to you is what life is about.  The truer you are to yourself, the more this world can begin to heal itself from pain and hurt feelings that get stored in the body for years and cause effects, sometimes, beyond repair.

Own your feelings. They are yours. Share them. We are here to listen.