THINGS that are HARD to SwaLLoW

THINGS that are HARD to SwaLLoW:
Warm milk in the desert, mid-day.
Prenatal Vitamins in your first trimester.
Peanut butter.
The thick outcome of oral sex.
Preachers who sermonize about lust while driving their Cadillacs, staring at hookers.
The smell of period farts.
A mouthful of skittles when you're stoned.
Smiling in spite of hurt feelings with a repeat offender.
Rejection.
Pride.
My words when confronted with your ego.

Let's break up with the idea of us.
I want to unclog my throat.

Difficult people is a mandatory in life. They rub us like sandpaper against a raw sunburn. Like a side cramp in mile five, with two more to go, they cause us to clutch and limp, and for goodness sake, breathe in your nose and out your mouth, and keep that shit even.

But they also challenge us to be our better self.
Rise above.
Whether it's the idea of not wanting to be anything like them, or if we go deeper into some kind of Jesus calling to love thy neighbor;
even if it is with clenched fists and grinding teeth.
We reach out, we "like", we ask for visits, we LOL; knowing each time the response is a haughty, pointed, silence from an impenetrable wall.
Ah.
But is that love I'm really showing?
I'm not sure. Probably not the pure kind.
I can tell you what it is though, it is an effort. And if that kind of effort is being given, there is love somewhere, for someone, motivating it's continuance.

I've reached some sort of self-inflicted rejection limit.
I've never really mastered the social angst of high-school; cowering beneath any type of Queen Bee. I was more of a "here's-my-middle-finger-why-don't-you-suck-it" kind of girl.
I'd like to think I've grown a little. Learned to give a measure of grace.
I mean, there is Jesus.
Although I picture him constantly shaking his head in exasperation, I'd like to think every now and again he gives me a heavenly high-five.
So,
I try to keep my middle fingers to myself.
And I also try to remember, we are walking a path unique to each one of us, and sometimes that path is rocky, steep, and hot damn if I don't keep stumbling over that same freakin' boulder. Someone please give me a leg up or let me learn to go around it already.
And also, maybe I am someone else's boulder too. There is that.

It is asked I turn my cheek. And then the other one,
It is not required I lay down on the floor and allow another human, no matter their position, pass over me as if I don't exist.
We both know I am here.
We both know how hard it's pretended I am not.

I'm going to let us off the hook.
I'm going to make it easier for us to swallow.
I'm not going to entice you to like me anymore. No more auctioning off myself in bewildered bits and placating pieces, to someone who continues to look at me like a garage sale slip of underwear.

Here's a truth that's real for everybody; most certainly a truth I grabbed a hold of at age nine and held it close to my chest as a vigilant shield, or swung it like a bat if someone came pitching at me with their small, teeth-barring, lies.
I decide what I am worth for myself.
If I don't, some asshat struggling with their own value and usefulness is going to decide it for me, and it will always be at a clearance price.
If I don't set a boundary, someone unworthy of my core self, will cross it
every. single. time.

Why?

It can be because they think they are better than you.
It can be because they are intimidated by you.
It can be because they are jealous of you.
It can be because they don't know how to handle you.
Or it can be because they don't know any better. (But come on. Unless they are four years old .... bullshit)
No matter which reason it is, every single one is unacceptable.
Each one is small.

We are ALL worth something. To God. To ourselves. To the ones that love us.
We are NOT always liked. Or appreciated. Or valued.
By our own tribe or the masses.

Choose your people. Choose who speaks into you and over you.
You can't help who speaks about you.
But you, and me, we can choose what we listen to, what takes root, what grows, and what we let go of.

XO