when i was forming this post in my mind, it was originally for the intention of griping. i know, you're shocked, right? however, the more i think about it, and the more the words started putting themselves together in my mind, it's actually not so much a gripe as it is a window to my inner self.
brace yourself.
okay. i fancy myself a hedgehog. they're little, they're cute, they have a built in defense mechanism. however, i decided to do some digging about hedgehogs to see if i really wanted to see myself as such.
turns out, they're not aggressive, they're fairly low maintenance, and they have all these great traits in order to make themselves adapt. how great is that? all of the things that i wish i had more of myself.
this whole post, like i said, started as a gripe. i gripe against someone i know. a gripe against someone that is saying incredibly slanderous things about me, about my ethics, about my husband, without actually knowing what the truth is behind everything. and this person is hiding behind this farce in order to make themselves look better in light of some very poor decisions this person made. and this person is trying to tell me how to live my life.
when people try to tell me how i am going to do things, as though the decision has already been made, i get a little prickly. a little hedgehog-ish. i try to run at first, and just get to cover so i have time to think, but eventually my spines come out.
i have never responded well to people trying to tell me what to do. especially since i've been an adult. my husband likes to take credit for that, and maybe he should, because there was a time when i was fairly docile. but the only way that i've gotten where i am was by laughing in the face of "you can't, you won't." and by the grace of God, of course. but i fully believe that God presents us with situations that we then have to choose. like a choose-your-own-adventure book....the paths are there, and it's up to us which way we go. and someone telling me "you can't, you won't" is like an open invitation for me to actually "can, will."
this is all fine and good, until someone decides to tell awful horrid things about me to people i care about. and the difficulty lies in the web of entanglement that encompasses emotion and welfare and whatnot. so the issue is then turned into, "i can, i would, but should i?" should i put my spines out and defend myself, or should i run for cover?
I dont know what to say Becca, as I have struggled with this for years. Comes from being emotionally abused and as you said being constantly told you cant, you wont, you arent good enough or smart enough etc.... I try really hard to believe that the people who know me best will always know the truth about who and what I am. I try to really hang onto the belief that those who lie about others and are mean and spiteful will eventually be punished on their own. They will have to answer to a higher power than me, its not my job to punish them even though I may want to get back at them and make them feel the pain that they have unjustly caused me to feel. That being said you also cant let yourself be walked on, so all of us have a breaking point but all too often I have found that striking back does not feel very good and it wont make the evil people of the world change.
ReplyDeleteHang in there, it will get better.