BEHIND MY QUIET

I've been a bit quiet lately, I know.

Some of that is just busyness.  I finally started as a leader with Weight Watchers and have been leading my own meeting, slowly figuring out what I'm doing and improving a little bit each week.  I've been making running a priority again. I've been trying to drastically reorganize and declutter my house, which has taken a big chunk of each day...  plus just a lot of kid-related things that have needed my attention.

But too...  I've had some things on my mind that I just haven't wanted to talk about.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine made a unilateral decision that concerned me. I wasn't asked or consulted... it was just made.  Initially, I was pretty unhappy about it... but I figured that I'd see how it played out. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I thought. But... as time has marched on, the decision has proved to be about as awful as I'd anticipated, with huge negative impact on the quality of our friendship. That's hurt.

But what I've come to realize lately is that I'm just not okay with that.

A funny thing happened to me over the course of the changes in my body over the last two years. I'm different. I have stronger belief in my own worth.  And it's easy to simplify that...  to say that I feel more worthy because I look better.  But it isn't just that.

Somewhere in the journey, you have to come face to face with the ways in which you've considered yourself unworthy and treated yourself as unworthy, and they aren't just because you're overweight.  There's a cultural bias, for sure, that is wrapped up in that. But you also realize that you have certain beliefs about yourself...  like that it's selfish to spend more on fresh produce for yourself because you're unworthy of it. Or that the hour you take for exercise each day could easily be spent on something else -- like your family or your job or the upkeep of your house -- and that you're wrong for spending it on yourself.

You have to come face to face with that and spin it on its head to get to the other side -- where you start to believe that it is okay to do those things because you are worthy.  Somewhere in the journey, you begin to see yourself differently. You begin to see your own self-worth. You grow in confidence. You grow in self-respect.

A dear friend of mine, who is a high school teacher, shared a letter with me recently that she received from one of her students. The young girl had been able to hold her own in a debate with a smart older boy because of some of the things they had learned in class, and the girl was thanking my friend for her part in that.  As the girl wrote, she talked about the impact that had made on her... how she always second-guessed herself, always believed that the things she thought were true were probably wrong because how could she be smart enough to be right?

It made me cry.  It made me cry and want to hug that little girl...  Partly because my heart broke for her, but also because I understood.  I understood those feelings. How many times have I doubted my own judgment because I felt too gullible, too uninformed, too willing to believe what people told me? How often have I looked to other people for what to believe because how could I be right?

What I've begun to realize is that I'm a lot smarter than I've given myself credit for. I'm worth more than I've believed.

I can't choose how other people treat me, how much value they give me.  But I can choose whether I allow myself to stay in a situation where there is such discrepancy.

Because I can see now that I'm worth more.

HEARING THROUGH OUR BITTERNESS

It was a friendship that had begun to sour.  Actually, it was past the souring point, but we were still in the phase where you dread the drama of the actual "break-up" enough that you're still friends on social media and you're still hovering in each other's circles.  Not because you're still a part of each other's lives... but you just don't want to deal with the trauma that will ensue when you hit the "unfriend" button. And as long as you don't, there's still that possibility of reconciliation.

There was a day that I'd said something.  Maybe I hadn't worded it right. Maybe I hadn't taken the time to read it with other tones than the one I wrote in before I hit Send. Suffice it to say that she heard it much differently than I said it.  We're talking MILES differently here.  The venomously responsive status of her own was the moment I knew. It was the moment where I knew that there was so much anger harbored there that she was no longer able to see anything I said through anything but a haze of bitterness and hatred. It took me aback. I didn't know until then. It was also the moment I knew for sure that there would never be any reconciliation between us.

It's funny about that.  Since then, I've really noticed how the way we think of someone colors how we hear the words they say and write.  If it's someone you really like, you're more apt to hear their words through a veil of positive thoughts. You assume that their tones and intents are ones of peace and goodwill and humor, and you hear them accordingly.

On the flipside, if it's someone we don't like... or someone that we've come to have bad blood with, our perceptions of how they say things change.  No longer do we assume that they meant well.  Instead, we assume that they didn't. We hear snark and pettiness and self-pity.

I've been there too, and not just on the receiving end.  Sometimes I'll hear the words of someone through my own veil of bitterness, and I have to be very proactive about asking, "Is that fair?  Are you hearing honestly?" Many times, the answer is "No." I have to pull myself back from hearing through my hurts.  They do color, and they color dishonestly. They make you hear things sometimes that just aren't there.

I guess there's a part of us that wants to believe that the people who have hurt us are bad. We want everything they say and do to be a support of why we're right and why they were wrong, and why they continue to be wrong.  It's some sort of weird self-validation.

But I guess it's not really fair to them.  So it's good to be aware of it, to know it's there. When you find yourself awash in that bitter ocean, sometimes the awareness is as much of a lifesaver as you need to pull yourself back to the shore so that you can listen honestly and truthfully.