Standing my ground, setting boundaries, making sure my needs are met, and not taking any crap are in the forefront of my mind lately, for a variety of reasons. These are issues I’ve always struggled with. Learning that I deserve as much respect as the next person is a lesson I seem doomed to have to repeat over and over and over again. But I’m sensing an inner shift. It feels different this time. The log jam seems to finally be breaking up.
The first of many things that is making a difference is the fact that I am reading this great book (well, I’m actually listening to it in audiobook form) entitled Be Your Own Bestie: A No-Nonsense Guide to Changing the Way You Treat Yourself, by Misha Brown. I got it from the library, but I finally broke down and bought it. (I really ought to get it in book form so I can cover it in highlighter, but I already have too much stuff lying around, and also, hearing his pep talks in his own voice is just too cleansing to pass up.)
Normally I abhor self-help books. They all pretend to have The Solution. The Cure to All Your Ills. They make it sound so simple, the act of transforming your life, as if all along there was just a switch you had forgotten to flip, and now that you’ve been shown where it is, voila! Instant happiness, or success, or whatever it is you happen to be seeking. Most of the time those books leave me feeling worse about myself, because for some reason, when all is said and done, I’m not transformed.
But this book is different, somehow. First of all, I’ve been following Misha’s Facebook Group for a couple of years now, and he’s a fierce advocate for women. He’s also all about calling people out on their disrespect, and that makes me respect him all the more. (He’s also on several other social media platforms, so search for yourbestiemisha on your favorite one, if you’re interested.)
His book is not some one-size-fits-all solution to all of your problems. It more like, “Hey, buy this suit off the rack and save yourself a fortune. Now, let’s help you come up with ways to tailor it to your satisfaction so that you will feel fabulous when you wear it!”
I can get behind that concept. I would never drink a magic potion made by someone else if I wanted to feel confident that I’d get a positive result. I’d want to make my own potion, with my own ingredients, based on my own wants, needs, aspirations and goals.
If you are looking for a few good sound bites, though, here were a few concepts from the book that I thought worthy enough to write down. (My apologies to Misha. I’m not sure I got them right enough to feel that quotation marks were appropriate.)
- Friends shouldn’t just withdraw. They should also deposit. When you’re with them, do you feel safe, seen and valued, or are you giving more than you’re receiving?
- It’s okay to stick up for yourself when you’re mistreated.
- Know your worth and refuse to negotiate.
- You should never have to beg someone to see you.
- If a relationship requires you to lose a piece of yourself, it’s not worth it.
- You can put yourself first and still be a good person!
- Give yourself grace when you make a mistake.
None of these are hard concepts, really, but it’s amazing how many of us need to be reminded. I know I do. And that’s the thing. If you start from a foundation of common sense, it’s easy to build something solid. So, read the book!
Another reason I’m feeling an inner shift toward standing my ground is that a dear friend of mine (Hi Harold!) wrote a Facebook post about running into various people from his past recently who have had negative impacts on his life. He discovered that they all appeared to be oblivious, and they had moved on. The lesson being that we are the ones in control of how we respond and whether we ourselves move on. And just like that, I remembered a similar experience I had well over a decade ago with someone who used to bully me in high school. My results were similar, and I was kind of proud of myself just now when I realized that I had, indeed, moved on. In fact, I had forgotten all about it after having written the post. Yay, me!
I’ll copy that post below. But before I do, I should mention two other posts to add a beginning and a middle to that emotional journey of mine. The first one is Lacerations, about two people I thought had befriended me, and instead humiliated me and lied to me and really, really hurt me. When I reread that one, I can feel my pain pouring off the page. I have to admit, though, When I look back at how I ultimately dealt with it, I’m extremely proud of myself. Damn, girl! There is a backbone in there somewhere!
The next post is entitled, Bully for You, Maybe, but Not for Me, Looking back, I can tell I had really learned the lesson about boundaries and sticking up for myself that time. Pity that it wasn’t the first time I’d learned it, and nor would it be the last. In it, I listed a lot of ways people continue to bully and be bullied into adulthood. It’s a very angry post. It’s an “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore” post. It’s a post about not settling for anything less than respect. That post should come with a lion’s roar sound effect. Oh, yeah.
I wonder how long I lasted that time before I fell back into my old habits of twisting myself into a pretzel in the false hope that someone might like me, of taking abuse because I didn’t want to cause a scene, and of sacrificing myself for the good of others? I can’t remember. It was so long ago.
The reason I think that sticking up for myself will stick this time is that I’ve changed quite a bit since then. First of all, I know myself so much more than I used to. I finally know that I’m on the autism spectrum, and that has made me look back on my life through a completely different lens.
I was never “just like everyone else, only not coping nearly as well” as I had been led to believe. I was never broken. I was just built differently, and living in a society that wasn’t built for people like me. Of course I was going to have issues. Of course I was going to be ostracized. Of course I had low self-esteem, and would happily throw away any and all boundaries if there was even the faint glimmer of hope that someone would like me.
Rather than clinging to false friends who treated me like crap and only stuck around until they felt I was no longer useful, what I needed was coping skills. What I needed was the confidence to know that quantity does not equal quality. I needed to understand that you will never be able to make anyone love you no matter how much you beg. They either will or they won’t.
That poor kid. I wish I could go back and hug her. I wish I could tell her that there was nothing wrong with her, and that she was okay just the way she was (because no one else ever told her that). I wish I could tell her that she had sensory superpowers that neurotypicals will never understand or appreciate, and for that, the pity should have been directed at them, not at her. I wish I could tell her that it wasn’t her who had catching up to do. (And it still isn’t.)
Most of all, I wish I could tell her that her instincts were correct. If she couldn’t get the coping skills, some sort of Rosetta Stone to interpret the neurotypical world so to speak (and that really hadn’t been conceived of, especially for undiagnosed females on the spectrum back then), then wanting to be by herself, rather than being thrown into the wood-chipper of childhood cruelty, was a legitimate reaction, and f**k anyone who had a problem with it. By being forced to try to be something she couldn’t ever be, and never wanted to be, she developed so much scar tissue that the adult me has been left with the emotional skin of an elephant.
The last reason I’m hoping that standing up for myself is here to stay is that I’m getting old and tired. Too tired to put up with anyone’s crap anymore. Too tired to stuff my anger. Too tired to do all the heavy lifting in supposed friendships. I’ve had it with being handed a steaming hot bowl of abuse and then being expected to eat it, like it, and then say, “Please, sir, can I have some more?”
I’m starting to take on all those adjectives that seem to mostly be applied to old people. Cranky. Crotchety. Grumpy. Irritable. Cantankerous. Crusty. Crabby. Touchy. Surly.
Not all the time, mind you. Mostly I’m a pleasant person. And I will always default to respect until such time as I’m not given respect in return.
But I’m telling you right now: You don’t want to f**k with me. My days of being taken advantage of are well and truly over, and if you doubt that, just try me. I have accumulated 61 years’ worth of whoop ass (in verbal form only, of course). I now have a surplus, and I no longer feel the need to ration it. I can pop open a can any time I think it will come in handy.
Having said that, I’m including, below, a post about confronting a bully, and letting your bitterness go. It’s scary to do, but ultimately, it sets you free. And that, Dear Reader, is the best feeling in the world.
July 21, 2013
About a year ago I got a friend request on Facebook from someone who made my life miserable in high school. I couldn’t believe it. I almost deleted it, but then I realized this was a rare opportunity for closure. So I accepted her friend request and sent her the following message:
“There are so many things I’d like to say to you. First of all, you made my life a living hell in high school. You bullied me, you harassed me, you followed me around, you destroyed my textbooks, one of which I had to pay for at a time when I was extremely poor. You broke into my locker, you humiliated me, embarrassed me, scared the hell out of me, lowered my already low self-esteem, and basically made me dread school at a point when I already dreaded being at home. I used to cry myself to sleep at night trying to figure out what I had done to deserve that. To this day I have no idea. Why on earth did you dedicate so much negative energy and time on me? What did I do?
“You have left me a lifelong legacy. I will never, EVER go to a high school reunion. I’d rather have root canal surgery than relive those days. And to this day, I have a knee-jerk reaction toward bullies. I will never understand, nor will I tolerate, people who delight in other peoples’ misery. You did that.
“I know this was long ago, and you’re probably a very different person (God, I hope so), I know I am. But give me one good reason, please, why I should be your friend now when you hated my guts then?”
Her response was quite interesting. “I am soooo sorry if I treated you that way. I honestly don’t remember it. I can’t imagine having ever been so cruel and heartless to anyone. I am truly sorry. If you can’t forgive me then I totally understand because those are all unforgivable acts. I’m sorry.”
So I replied, “I appreciate that. It felt good to get it off my chest. I forgive you. Friendship might be a little harder, but I’m willing to give it a shot, if you are. Just goes to show one never knows the impact one makes in the world. I’m sure there are people I’ve hurt, too.”
Wow. She didn’t even have a memory of the damage she had done to me, and from what I can tell from Facebook, has turned out to be a good person, although as expected we don’t interact that much. And yet I had held onto that bitterness for decades. By doing that, I had only been damaging myself. What a waste.
This is why forgiveness is so important. Without it, you remain stuck like a mouse in a glue trap. It does you no good. And people do grow up and change and learn from their experiences. They really do.
I know someone who is still very bitter about his treatment in high school 25 years later, and he’s convinced that the kids who were so horrible to him then are still horrible people now. I’m willing to bet that most of them aren’t, and that most of them don’t even remember him or what they did to him, or if they do remember, they don’t spend a great deal of their time dwelling on it. But he holds that bitter cup of acid deep inside himself, and it punishes them not at all.
It’s time to move on.
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