Find Out What It Means to Me

Sock it to me. Common theme in life this week: self-respect and making your word mean something. Now maybe it's just me, but I find that these two things are becoming slippery notions and falling just out of reach.

When you're cleaning up the past, apparently you encounter a lot of cob-webs. Let's get more graphic; they are not cob webs, because those are easy to clean with a little feather duster or broom. These nasty things are something straight out of a sci-fi movie. You know the B-rated ones I am referring to: giant, rigid and obscenely awkward representations of real-life arachnids, encasing rural towns in pathetically represented silk webs as frenzied citizens scurry about in shear terror. Those are the ones.

I would like to officially announce that I have been ensnared. As much as I writhe about, attempting to free myself, I become more entangled in their traps. I guess the past continues to haunt you, as long as you let it. Lately, I have been gripping it ever so tightly. Maybe, it's because I'm afraid of the future. Maybe it's because it is familiar and homey. Maybe, it's a habit. More than likely, it's all of the aforementioned.

So where does that leave me? I look at many of my relationships, whether longevity based, superficial or peripheral and begin to realize that people tend to treat me the same way. From my relatives to my business relationships, many people I surround myself with resort to behaviors wrought with manipulation, placation and domination. Against my own will, I have been forced to take several steps back and look hard upon myself and these people. Why is there a continuous pattern of behavior exhibited by people that I surround myself with? Well, as much as I wish to avoid admitting being an enabler, I cannot; the answer is that I allow people to treat me poorly.

I do and always have allowed people to treat me as I treat myself: without respect and consideration. People tell me they will call; they don't. I text people; they don't text back. People owe me money; they don't pay. People use words and similar behaviors to try to enforce a belief that I deserve poor treatment. People use words to turn their bad behaviors into the powerful suggestion that I am crazy. I have done wrong. I am the reason for their bad behavior. Well....guess what people? Today is the day of my epiphany. I am not crazy. I did not behave poorly. I am a tremendous and special individual, worthy of your respect just as you are worthy of mine.

With all of this cleansing, comes a lot of pain. Realizing that the one that you have hurt the most is not as you always suspected, not as you always blamed yourself for and not as you always assumed you were doing wrong unto is yourself is immensely painful. Realizing that you allow people to push you around is downright disarming. How could I do this to myself? How could this happen? Where have I been this whole time?

At this moment, I make myself a promise: I will no longer encourage others, no matter how much I love them or care for them, to manipulate me. They will act on their words. They will be called on their bad behaviors. They will treat me with respect and consideration. They will do this, because today I start doing this for myself.

As much as I need to call others on their sh-t, I have had to begin to clean up the biggest pile of my own.