I am a very strong person. No, not only as a woman, as a human. I don’t take shit. I’ve been programmed not to. Preconditioning in childhood, saw to that.
…The thing is, sometimes difficulties tear you down and down and weaken you, sometimes they do the opposite and stiffen your guard. It isn’t always one way or the other, nor from person to person, a consistency. Life is too harried and messy to allow for this perfected conclusion and plan of attack. Which means that even very strong people can get caught up in a circus freak-show of an abusive and toxic relationship every now and then, which in any other circumstance, they would see for what it is, and set fire to the bastard, instantly.
…Only life is…messy. Politics are messy. Relationships, friendships, family ties, can get so deep and scarred and reheal over twists of rusty barbed wire and promises, which shouldn’t be allowed to. Allegiance is a wonderful thing, but not to a cancer. The thing is, when these deep seeded relationships are finally seen for what they really are…the cancer is already alive and well and breeding. It takes over. And your history and time and family and everything else becomes twisted up into the mix as well.
…So what do you do?
…Ignore it? Excuse it? Try to relabel and reclassify it to sound like it isn’t what it really is? Because that way might be easier? Socially. Politically. And even in that deep down part of your heart that says, “Yes, but it wasn’t always like this, some good has come of it.” Or, “But family, is family…the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
As a strong, imperfect human, who sucks at forgiveness of others, who builds walls (plural) around them, and trusts almost no one (related or otherwise)…the fact that when someone actually scales the walls, earns the trust, and then fucks with it…should be soundly aware, they will swiftly be dealt a death blow. In case they aren’t aware, I have thoroughly educated them.
…Except “sometimes.” And I don’t always know why?
…The inconsistancy doesn’t make sense. Even to me. Why is this person excommunicated, while that one gets a slap on the wrist?
I don’t know.
…It’s a thing that has bothered and baffled me about myself. Upon further reflection, sometimes I can find a “reason,” but is anything worth ignoring a deep seeded “wrong” at a level so spurious that it eats at you across weeks, months, even years at a time?
…Do you owe anyone your self respect? For any reason? Do you “owe” anyone anything?
I feel that an uncomfort I have lived with for far too long, a history of me that I have always felt ashamed of…for no reasons which I was responsible for…a thing which shaped so much of me and my life…somehow became a mantle I felt I had to wear and suffer through for reasons which were never good enough.
…The truth is: no reason would have been good enough.
I have been a very strong person who has allowed an abuse, long scarred, to eat at me. There are no visible bruises, no scratches, no bodily violations. But there were lies, manipulations, continual boundary crossings, assumptions, and suffocations. There was a loss of innocence, a reiteration of trust issues…together with family and hardships and what I believe at the core, might have also been real actual love. It is after all, family.
…But that does not excuse, it does not diminish, the egregious wrongs.
…And when I see its pattern start to reveal itself again, in a whole new light of circumstances…only then can I truly see-SEE it for what it truly is. And was.
I am a very strong woman. I am a very strong person. And I am at last saying to this circumstance: I am done with you now.
I owe you nothing.
I never did.
I am free of this thing, whatever it has been.
And I am putting it in print. Not because you will read it. But because I needed to say it.
…And for all the strong people out there, feeling stuck in a circus merry-go-round of fucked up exceptions and reasons to know:
“You are amazing, and I know it is difficult to imagine: but it’s okay to let go now.”
It’s okay to say: “I’m done.”
~D
