Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.Henry Ward Beecher

And Project Reverb asks about  Failure while Kat McNally and Rachel Maddox  wonder:

Today, identify something muddy that kept recurring for you throughout 2013, and then ask yourself this: What’s the clear truth underneath this damn mud if I finally wash myself clean?

 

And they are of course related. I have heard over and over…You teach people how to treat you.

You teach them by what you won’t say when they are cruel. You teach them by what you continue to put up with. You teach them by letting them take but never give. 

And this was a large part of the last year. And when I made a mistake and was roundly condemned, viciously even, when every ugly thought I knew but hoped wasn’t  lurking beneath the surface was exposed, something just broke in me. 

And it was time.

I’m good at standing up for others, not so much myself, though I do eventually manage. It takes much longer than it should .

I just don’t deserve to have one way relationships.I shouldn’t have to worry about every thing I say or how I say it.

I don’t deserve to be lied to and yelled at and made fun of. I don’t need to spend each day being disgusted by sexist, degrading behavior. 

I also have to learn to pick my battles better. Or maybe these were the right battles, I just lost. Or not. Perhaps it was necessary just to stand up and speak. And I have the experience that can help others now. 

What have a lost? Something I dreaded daily .

And at least one relationship that *really* wasn’t one. Because if all that ugly could spill out—and I’ve saved all the words in case I weaken —well the ugly was the truth. What came before it was the lie.

The strange thing is I don’t feel too angry about all this, I’m all angered out. With the relationship I guess I’m just done. I’m back in my place as far as that goes and it works for all of us.  Now with the other? In time that anger will fade, that has already begun. Each day is a step further away.

 

 

 

broken statue by evil peacock