Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if I’m fooling myself about life. Like maybe I am a piece of shit and deserve all the hardships I have been through in life. Most of my family has treated me like an outsider as long as I can remember. I’m down to just a few friends. I’ve never been given much of a chance at the jobs I have worked. My kids are gone, their hearts poisoned by a woman who has hated me for years.
Maybe the people who hate me are just being honest, because nobody has bothered to tell me what is wrong with me except the people who hate me. And they would stand in line to get a chance to take a shot at me whenever possible. Especially with their brand of honesty.
And some of the people who claim to “love” me, have just reminded me of their feelings when I wasn’t putting up with their bullshit anymore, and how easily withdrawing from my life can be when we don’t see eye to eye. I’ve been through that so many times.
It’s enough to make me bitter. It’s enough to doubt my affirmations that I am trying my best to be a good person and to treat others fairly and with respect. Is it so much to ask that people who promise to stay in my life actually follow through with it?
It’s true I have burned bridges, and I have caught hell about it. I just don’t like the alternative of being disrespected and keeping people around I can no longer trust. Is that too much to ask? It makes it almost impossible to trust someone when they smile to your face and plot behind your back.
No wonder I’m paranoid.
It’s been a hard…life, I guess?
I think of the movie The Shipping News and how the main character was living his life so timidly. In a shitty job, lacking any ambition, any self-confidence. He moves to a place that accepts him and treats him with respect, and he just flourishes. Sometimes I feel like that. Most of my life I’ve been under someone’s thumb, and I tell you the days when I rise above that are especially hard, because people are eager to remind me about their poor opinions of me.
Maybe I’m not a piece of shit, but I am tired to trying to prove I’m not. Bone weary of the whole process.
I’ve read most of the Boundaries books, and yes, good boundaries mean that you filter out the toxic people in your life and the good ones can come through. There are days that can be very lonely. It makes me sad to think that there might be so few good people left in this world. Like I mentioned, I only have a few close friends left in this world. I could probably count them all on one hand.
If that says something about me, then so be it, but what if it says something else? What if it says that there just aren’t that many good people left in this world? And to not be lonely sometimes, you have to drop your standards. You have to settle. You have to cut out some of your boundaries. What is more important? To have boundaries? Or company?
Wendigo Mountain 