We are not contingent on what others think of us.  Sometimes a chance conversation, a moment we didn’t plan reveals more than we expected, another level.  Sometimes the last person you expect to understand ends up seeing right through to the core of the issue—they see something you’ve seen too.  They speak your language in a way you’ve been looking for.  This person says something just so we understand that we aren’t crazy.  Someone who sees what we haven’t said, what we have been trying to say all along.  They cut to the core, the root of the issue, not to make us bleed but to cut away all the other crap people have made us feel about ourselves.  It takes a certain level of understanding to see that those who are hurt and desperately looking for an answer can sometimes come across a little feral.  They can see that those who don’t share all they feel may be hurting the most, or protecting themselves.  They also cut through the bullshit and see that even if we feel scared or angry or if we have trauma that prevented us from incorporating and understanding how to make a lasting, genuine, accepting human connection, that it doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility of owning our shit. 

I don’t want to continually spend the rest of my life on the precipice of what if, the limbo of does this person want me or do they not?  Am I good enough as I am?  Are we too different for each other?  How do we resolve this if we can’t talk about it?  Why doesn’t this person want to talk about it?  What about owning their mistakes makes this so difficult for them?  Is it because when they’ve made mistakes before they were shunned?  Is it because the key people who were supposed to be there for them couldn’t accept them and couldn’t help them be who they were meant to be?  I don’t need to be someone’s all—I want us to be all on our own.  But I also can’t settle for being someone’s maybe.  It’s the maybe that hurts.  The waiting that hurts.  I’ve spent most of my life waiting for someone else to make a decision and then I would make my move.  Ever the people-pleaser I needed to make sure they were happy with their decision so then I could make mine.  But now it makes me feel different.  The waiting makes me feel less than.  And I can’t make someone take responsibility for their role in a position they accepted but no longer want to work for.

I’m learning to accept that when someone makes us the option, we are to remove ourselves from the situation.  We will never be able to make them love us a certain way, or feel any particular way about us.  If they don’t have the desire to work with us or to own their portion of the relationship, then as challenging as it is, we need to remove ourselves from the situation.  If we are an option to them, we can’t treat ourselves as an option.  We all have so much light to offer and we can’t let if fall into the abyss of someone who runs hot and cold, someone who doesn’t even know who they are.  Someone who went along for the ride, accepting the life built together only to discover that they didn’t want it at all.  It’s painful to discard that type of work after that many years.  We need to find strength in who we are.  We need to hear what someone on the outside says and take it to heart.  Sometimes we are too close to the forest and we can’t see the trees.  Sometimes the ones we thought planted us really only buried us, or they trimmed the bloom when it got too big.  I have a lot of light and a lot of growth to share—and still more growth to come.  I don’t need to wait for someone’s approval to grow.  We just need to grow, we need to be that voice that tells us we aren’t crazy.  Know our worth.  Know when to walk away.  Know what is worth nurturing.