When I think about my evolving life over the past year, I feel grateful to have gained some ability to step back from my emotional vantage point in certain things, and take a more outsider view. When I find myself questioning why I’m going through something, I’m trying to examine the actual, logical why, and not the emotional one.
My thoughts about myself, other people, and the world have resembled a salad spinner in my head, and while I sort these out in therapy, I’ve found myself super guarded and exercising boundaries to protect my integrity, with more vigilance than ordinary. It causes rifts between some people that I wish it didn’t. For example, fights with my husband that I’m not proud of, as panic causes me to be protective against something he isn’t trying to offend. On the other hand, it weeds out people who do not respect me, truly, as a person.
And let’s be honest. It’s 2020, and I’m too old to mess around with people who more than simply have things in common with me. That kind of superficiality is exactly what I don’t need. To gain authentic friendships and relationships, common interests are nice, but mutual respect for each other’s integrity is really key. It’s important to pay attention to how people treat not only you, but others, and then to have enough respect for your own personal integrity to walk away when it becomes necessary.
I think I find myself in that situation this week with a friend who has given me a cold shoulder for days. This is someone whose personal integrity I have ignored for the sake of being non judgmental. Isn’t that stupid? I have known her for a couple years and have grown close with her, so I won’t pretend to not be hurt by it, but in reality, I should have known better than to pick her as a friend. Even more so, she picked me and I allowed her to attach.
This is someone who laughs off the toxicity in her life as acceptable, because we are all toxic. She just humors herself about it. This is someone who has limited sympathies for certain personal plights and zero for others. Sort of choosey about doling out sympathy and judgement. And I have greatly offended her by posting something about my life, totally unrelated to her, but she decided I was casting judgement against her, and now I’m out. I’m being ignored.
I have no problems letting people go and the thing is, I really need to be better about which people I allow around so I can avoid these unpleasant situations. This situation could have even been predicted. It’s not fun to lose friends, it’s also not fun to learn unpleasant things about their personalities that cause them to react so poorly. This also confirms the baseline fact, which I already knew. I’m simply vibrating at a higher frequency, on a much different level than the people I have let go of the past year. And that’s not a bad lesson.
There are certain people in my life that I can see definitely add to my positive energy, generally. There are others that are just on a lower wavelength, and as controversial as it is to say that, I’m tired of being brought down. It’s not other people’s responsibility to act like better people toward me, but my responsibility to put people in my life who have enough personal integrity to never have crossed boundaries or mistreated me in the first place.
This does not blame myself for things that have happened but rather, examining how I might be better about the quality of people I have in my life. Judgement happens every day. Others my judge me and decide they aren’t interested at all in getting to know me further, and I lose zero minutes of sleep over that. Judgement is normal, and I will be a little more judgey in the future.
Moving forward, I won’t wait around on this person to decide she’s going to speak to me, over a post so small and petty, I’m shocked by her reaction for total cold shoulder. It’s the kind of psychological manipulation I refuse to play part to. I do not allow people to just give me the silent treatment over such simple things, as it’s so beneath my personal dignity.
This will be the third friend in a calendar year with whom I have parted ways. All three were because my personal boundaries on how I allow myself to be treated were violated. I both will pick better people as friends going forward, and employ judgement, but continue to stand up for myself and my values. At the end of the day, it’s very healing for me as I work through my trauma. Knowing I can have control over some things people around me helps me feel less traumatized.
C’est la vie, as they say. Onward journey.
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