When I started Grade 8 in high school, I was a lucky recipient of a bully. She was bigger than me, meaner than me and for some reason chose me to be her prime target. Awesome.
I spent the next two years of my life in constant knowing that every time I went around the hallway corner, chances were pretty good I was going to get slammed into the locker or shoved into the oncoming students or called some ridiculous name that didn’t apply to me at all but that she somehow was positive I deserved.
When she finally graduated and I had some peace in the hallways, I vowed that never again would anyone shove me around or treat me like a piece of dirt just because they felt better about themselves by doing that.
Over the years I have had a couple of other situations where I was nearly back in Grade 8. Once, I let it go on longer that it should have because I couldn’t clearly see that I did indeed have a choice in how I get to be treated. That was many years ago now, and in my life since then I have been pretty good at cutting loose when the situation looked like maybe it was going to head in that direction.
Last week one of those situations arose again.
I won’t get into the gory details because the reality of it is that she doesn’t deserve any more of my attention. She may read this, I don’t really care. It’s not about her.
It’s about me…because this is my blog, and that is generally the point. I have learned in the last week and of course over the 50 years of trying to figure shit out, that it really wasn’t about me or anything I did wrong. It’s not because I am insecure, it’s not because of me at all.
People need a target. Sometimes they are aware of what they are doing and sometimes they aren’t.
But this week…this girl took the target off of her back and walked away. I don’t want to play.
I have learned that I need to pick my battles, and to me that means fighting for the things that matter. Like my family, my health, love…
You know the big stuff.
I can indeed duck and weave when someone is aiming at me for no reason whatsoever…
And it’s not about me. It’s all about them. Which is, in the big picture…not my fucking problem.
We all know that life is too bloody short to waste it on people that don’t deserve us anyways, right? Right. We deserve to be loved, we deserve to be treated like princes and princesses. We deserve to live life without being picked on, shit on or shoved around.
Today I can finally say that maybe I kinda feel like a grown up. I am proud of myself for walking away and holding my head high. I know in my soul that I have integrity and I am kind. I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I am taking what I deserve in this life and discarding the things I don’t.
I don’t deserve to be treated badly to make anyone else feel better about themselves. All you will see is me walking away…
