“It might take some friends and a warmer shirt, but you don’t get thick skin without getting burnt,” Tyler Joseph.  I shared a bit about what’s happening with some relationships with people I considered friends recently and I want to share this next stage of the evolution in that group.  And this is where I’m at: the burning is done.  There is no more active fire on this situation so it’s a bit less reactive and the wound is no longer spreading.  That’s in large part to the realization that this is just a stage—a matter of building thicker skin.  People will be who they are and it’s on us to believe them when they show us who they are.  I let them in, I shared with them.  And it hurts to be let down in that manner but the beauty of it is that it shows the people who really care.  There’s no acting, there’s no pretending, there’s nothing forced about being a certain way with certain people. There’s freedom in walking away from anything that doesn’t serve but there is a particular feeling of walking away and into what is right.  It suddenly fits and makes sense.  It becomes easy.  I know that at times when it’s easy we tend to not trust it.  We are so used to difficult that we second guess it.  Life has challenges, but it’s never meant to be so hard we can’t move.

The people we invite into our circle matter just as how we do our work matters.  Where we direct our energy matters.  When things get hard, we have to change. We have to shift that focus.  And sometimes the hardest things to do are the things we KNOW we have to do.  We have to let go of the familiar because we know it’s suffocating us and taking away from what matters.  The things we know have become too small for us and that includes the people in our circle.  If that circle isn’t advancing us then we must ask ourselves what it is for.  Above all, healthy relationships don’t burn us.  The people who love us don’t hurt us.  Love doesn’t hurt. It’s perfectly reasonable to walk away from something that hurts.  Every human being goes through some level of learning this lesson, that’s unavoidable.  But as I’m entering a new era in my life, I see that I’m less and less tolerant of it.  I’ve always been fairly intuitive of people and their character and I used to deny it.  I used to talk myself out of what I felt only to be proven right.  I’d tell myself over and over again that I’d trust myself the next time only to fall back into old habits and give someone the benefit of the doubt.  The simple truth is this: we aren’t for everyone and not everyone is our friend. 

Relationships are tricky work and the dynamics change constantly.  Even the strongest of relationships go through trials and changes—that’s how we grow together.  Some relationships grow apart.  Some relationships make us grow up.  Keep the saying about people coming into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime and know that everything has its purpose.  The last couple of years taught me about strength in a way that nearly broke me and I have promised myself that I will never let myself get pushed to that point to learn a lesson again.  It’s only recently that I’ve truly understood the depth of my programming and how damaged I’ve been.  I didn’t know any better until I was given this opportunity.  The things I endured felt like shit and I knew they were wrong.  I knew I was being used every time it happened and through some sick sense of self-worth I felt like I deserved it and I never felt strong enough to stand up to it effectively without losing my cool.  Now that I’ve gotten a taste of genuine appreciation and been given the chance to live a life conducive with what I wanted, I don’t understand HOW I put up with it that long.  I can only believe it was my training.  I’m proud I broke free of that pattern and have learned that I don’t need to be chocolate and have everyone love me.  I am me and the right people will accept that—so I will too.  Thick skin to deflect the crap, open heart to learn, and intuition to know the truth.  That’s how we put the fire out.