Being used feels like being violated.
It feels like someone forcing themselves through your front door while you’re not actually inviting them in but rather standing in the doorway with body language that clearly suggests to back away.
I was used for 33 years.
It took me 33 years to understand why. It took me minutes after to decide it would never happen again.
And then I did a few rounds of understanding and deciding for many other corners of my life before my brain went, “AHHH I get it!”
I’ve always wanted to be liked. But you’ll never feel liked if you don’t like yourself.
The problem or now as I call it, the gift, was that I didn’t know HOW to like myself.
No one ever teaches you the how.
They say don’t.
They say do.
They say should.
They never say how.
It was through the not knowing that I learned the knowing.
It was through the heartache, pain, resentment and fear that I learned the love I was craving.
It was through the allowing that I learned the boundaries I was wanting.
And it was from all the using that I learned my value.
Demanding my attention but you won’t ever reciprocate.
Controlling my whereabouts but never disclosing yours.
Asking for favors but having nothing I was wanting.
That’s me putting it mildly.
Want it truthfully?
Telling me to fuck you but having someone you’re committed to publicly.
Contacting me only to get information from me that you need.
Shaming me for not supplying your needs.
Picking my brain in vulnerable settings to take something from me.
Raping my energy, violating my boundaries and then swearing you’re a friend to me.
Disrespecting my time and energy but manipulating me into believing I did something in that moment to MAKE YOU treat me disrespectfully.
Taking advantage of my presence and loyalty only to abandon me when I’m in need.
For 33 years I felt I was to blame.
With my spiritual knowledge I knew I was attracting these things but the truth is that just because you know what’s happening and understand the inner-workings…that doesn’t make it okay to tolerate.
There’s where I had it twisted.
I thought because I knew my role in it all that compassion required me to tolerate the way I was being treated. That’s not the case.
That is never the case.
Just because you know WHY someone abuses you and your role in that exchange, doesn’t mean you have to sit back and endure the abuse.
But a lot of people say you should and have to and to them I say, “Fuck you. I dare you to endure a day of the abuse I’ve received mentally, physically and emotionally and then stand in my shoes with more inner peace then Gandi.”
It’s a metaphor.
Even though I knew why I attracted things and was working hard at shifting those patterns – I, myself continued to endure abuse from people and I used the excuse I had to.
The truth was I wanted to.
I believed if I knew better and walked away from you that I was abandoning you.
The truth was in walking away from you, I was walking back home to me.
In walking away from you, I would no longer be enabling you and no longer be keeping myself stuck in a holding pattern that I wanted out of for many years.
Us people pleasers enable abusers. We use your dysfunction to make ourselves feel good. Then we stick around to feed that wound of fixing something that can’t be fixed through anyone but you.
It’s a cycle of fuckery as I call it or a method to insanity.
If I know I can never fix someone because spiritually fixing you is up to you then at least I’ll never have to quit that addiction of fixing if I’ve got you.
After 33 years I quit.
I quit abusing painkillers in my early twenties. I quit smoking cigarettes in my mid-twenties and quit alcohol for good in my thirties. Recently I had a some cocktails on different occasions and a glass of wine to see what I’d physically and mentally do and went I left the restaurant or person’s home all I could think about was making sure I had a bottle of my own at home.
That’s when I knew it was no good.
Attaching to something outside of you is what an addict does. It’s also what people pleaser’s do. Believe it or not it’s the same addiction showing up differently and it’s up to you to choose.
Are you strong enough to feed that need emotionally without the help of an outside substance or human being? Or would you prefer to turn to something because you’re emotionally lazy?
I was emotionally lazy my whole life. So after a few cocktails I realized when you are prone to making things outside of you more important than you – it’s best to keep a safe distance from them until you’re strong enough within to not fall into that addictive trap again.
If I want to drink I must space it out.
If I want a healthy relationship I must feed myself first.
If I want to teach anyone, anything I must embody it first.
Like my mom always told me, “Everything in moderation Amy!”
The truth is I violated me and my needs and took responsibility for people then violating me. When you know how to make people feel good because that’s all you ever knew how to do, it’s easy to blame myself for you mistreating me.
And for every time you mistreat me I blame me harder for not pleasing you enough to not mistreat me.
That’s how the cycle continues.
Yes, you’re responsible for you. In that responsibility comes a boundary that states I am not responsible for what you do or how you think or speak. I am responsible for me.
You holding yourself responsible at all for what the other party is doing is simply enabling.
In choosing to please me I no longer enable your neediness.
I no longer give you permission to be lazy.
I remove myself as your source and make you see yourself clearly.
You can shout at the mirror all day because it’s not giving you the reflection you want to see. But that mirror is going to stand still and show you you, clearly, until you come to accept what you see.
At the end of the day if you’d like something else looking back at you, it’s up to you to change it on you because even if you look in a different mirror, you will still see the same damn thing every damn day.
