“I won’t sacrifice my mental health to keep someone comfortable in their chaos,” Jay Douglas.  We each live in our own reality where we can be the hero, the victim, the villain, the genius, the martyr, the cool one, the one with it all together, the creative—anything we want to be.  That’s part of the beauty of being human: we can be what and who we want to be and we can change it when we need to.  We can be some facet of all these things and chances are at some point in our lives we will be all of these things—sometimes all in one day, you never know.  No one is responsible for keeping up with what goes through our minds in those situations.  We aren’t mind readers and the things that make us comfortable may not work for others.  The truth is we need to seek less comfort and more stability and we get stability with truth.  We get stability the more we practice accepting reality for what it is.  Some people like to be in the thick of the storm so they can be that hero and fix everything and others like to be in the story so they can be the victim. There are others, still, who like to create the storm—they ARE the storm.  The truth is, no matter what end of the spectrum someone falls in (entirely peaceful to entirely chaotic) it isn’t our job to make them comfortable.

We see it every day: realities collide because we have different beliefs, experiences, and views that shape how we see the world and what we do, the choices we make.  That is entirely normal and the human experience varies just so we are able to see the differences and taste all the variety of the world.  But I can’t force someone to live in my reality anymore than they can force me to live in theirs.  We are different people.  When a relationship differs so greatly that I need to shape and tailor my actions and views to suit yours or vice versa, we start to see the issue.  The reality either of us live in isn’t compatible and that would mean we have to become something we are not to support that relationship.  There are every day differences that can spice things up a bit like a preference of coffee over tea but if we have a fundamental difference in opinion over the type of life we live or the beliefs we share on how to treat people, that means we have to bend who we are and the mind isn’t meant to deal with that.  As malleable as the mind is, the soul isn’t so easily twisted and that is where we start to break.

I speak from a place of absolute certainty when I say the mental gymnastics involved with keeping someone comfortable when they have no desire/drive to see things any way but their own is exhausting and painful.  The mind can only bend so much and we can only spend so much time convincing our own mind that at one point someone will understand and do the same for us, they will see it our way.  These people haven’t the slightest inkling to be adaptable.  Even if they see the need to embrace another viewpoint, they feel what they know or feel is more important so they expect the world to bend to their will.  We have our own views for a reason and they have nothing to do with adapting our reality in a way that harms ourselves.  If we take the emotion out of it and strip it down to the facts, we arrive at a middle ground and if someone refuses to meet us there, it isn’t our job to uproot our lives to make them feel better.  Being in a relationship whether it be familial, friendly, professional or other doesn’t require giving up our peace because someone prefers chaos.  We can walk away otherwise we end up with a mind like a pretzel and often alone to figure out how to unwind it.  Don’t give anyone that power—be the center of our own world and let those who need chaos find it outside of our minds.