What's Hurt Got to Do with It?

Sometimes I panic about now being happy again. Worried that I could slip back into the unknown, a place I was in for far too long. A place I didn’t even know I was in for the first few years, until I crashed and burned, monumentally.

I have worked hard, made some hard decisions and really had to readjust and rediscover who I am, but I think I’m there. With brave choices come brave and interesting realizations.

Hurt people, hurt people. It’s toxic.

I’m not blameless, I never am! Sometimes I let people take advantage of me, just to see if they will. A test, if you will. Life is challenging enough. Keeping any form of mental illness tamed, protected, and managed without it being others people's business, drawing it to the fore only exacerbate its lurking prominence. Our protective stance on our own sanity is judged, speculated upon and misunderstood, damned if you do, and screwed if you don’t! There is always more than one perspective, more than one way of looking at things. There can be two realities, and even more.

But rejection hurts. Jesus does it get under your skin and eat you up. The energy you waste trying to prove they shouldn’t reject you when in fact, that energy is so worthy elsewhere.

“You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot--it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.”— Maya Angelou

I was so consumed in receiving misguided hatred that I could not see, I could barely breathe. I was so intoxicated by fear and other people’s loathing, that I forgot who I was. Fear, threat and jealousy consume our everyday lives, so much so that it can eat you up and distort your reality. Take back the control.

Don’t get me wrong, I, as are many others, am a validation whore. That is a world we envelop ourselves in. A trap that is increasing our mental health endemic.

Nobody tells me, or you, who to be. They’ll try and squash you into their box, it is nobody’s duty to conform if they don’t wish to. People who judge you are bored. If you don’t like or agree with what somebody does, don’t watch them. If you’re unhappy with your own decisions, change them. Make good choices and choose to be kind.

We are a result of everything that has happened to us, for better and for worse. Meaning some have to work harder to remain true, and unaffected by bigotry, jealousy, tragedy, and life’s unfairness. The self fulfilling prophecy and traps of life.

But I’m fed up with letting people have power over my emotional state. There is a rock bottom, and I hit it, but you know what? As hideous as it was to get there, it forces you to look so deeply, so introspectively at what put you there (assuming you get out of it, this is where the strength needs to override) that you can come out a better person. Positive attribution. There was a point where I thought I would never understand that concept again, but it’s back. I’m back and I want to stay back.

“Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.” – Dennis P.