Keep in mind that we’re in 2024, so street slang, trending catch phrases or ‘sayings’ on social media are ever-changing & on the up. “Now, if only there was a way to monetize these ‘concepts’, like they did with cryptocurrency or NFTs mmmmmm…” she says expressing a curious stare into the distance, while caressing her imaginary beard. OK I digress LOL …. We’ve now progressed to calling people trash; “He is trash”, “they are trash”, “she is trash”, all phrases I cannot stand, no matter how harmless or innocent these phrases in today’s day may seem. STILL! No human should ever be referred to as trash or anything related to trash.

Sidebar – The other day I allowed myself to get angered around a surfacing trigger which is insistent on reappearing, even after I believed I had worked through it. Then I caught myself & became acutely aware of this anger so, I stopped the emotional swirl & instead, proceeded to engage in my 7-layer self-questioning exercise. GOLLY GEE, did I uncover some stuff. I was ready to face & initiate REAL healing on this matter. See, these trigger symptoms surface once we’re ready to deal with them & resurface if we’re too stubborn to work it through. To me, healing is like an onion (typical comparison but yet so effectively pertinent). You’ll only be ready to deal with an emerging issue of unhealed trauma one layer at a time. Elevating from the current layer involves fully engrossing oneself in the peeling away of it & dealing with it to completion. Yes, healing requires some effort on your part, but no such efforts elicit fully-focused, undivided, energy-depleting, self-abandoning strategies or methods.

Analogy time: If you’ve stubbed your toe, you wouldn’t sit there moment in & moment out speaking to it, coaxing it to heal. NO! instead you’d band-aid the sucker up, limp a little coz of the discomfort & carry on with your day. Healing happens while you’re doing life! Give it a week or so, & voila, you’d have your toe back, healed & restored, buuuuuuuut an added benefit would be that you’ve now become more aware of that sneaky sharp edged ball & claw on the foot of that table leg, haven’t you? You’ve learnt a valuable lesson.

Anyway, these anecdotes are not the foci of my blogpost, yet nonetheless dabble in varied faces of healing, while doing life, such as reading this post. This is ultimately why we’re all here. So, if you’re ready to face yourself & heal, I’m ready to nosedive straight in.

We know where to run. We know who to call. We know who’d be willing to listen, don’t we?! The lengths we go to, to be liked or to protect our toxic ‘peace’ rather than wade through healthy conflict, baffles me. “If I shut my eyes & squeeze tight enough, it’ll all go away”. Our relationships, & with no discrimination here, I’m talking about all assortments of relationships, have become a place of survival not a place of thriving for many of us. We’ve become aggressively hellbent on making it work & so convinced of the potential in others, that we’ve learnt how to put up with things aggravating the very core of who we are, with things we know we do not deserve. We’ve become jaded & no longer trust obvious, undeniable evidence or patterns of behavior.

The hope that things will magically fix themselves without any concerted effort dangles before us like a golden carrot on a hypnotizing swing. I’m sorry to break it to you, but you cannot trust potential, essence or intentions, BUT YOU CAN TRUST PATTERNS. Now hear me, you see the patterns, you talk about it, explicitly, you effectively communicate your dissatisfaction around the disrespect, but it still continues. WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN? Ima tell you why, because you keep shifting your boundary to accommodate their blatant disrespect. Do I feel bad for you?, I once did. I even made concessions for you, until I was battered with this truth myself. They kept calling my bluff & I kept caving, so much so that it became humorous. My threats were a joke, harmless & permeable; porous. It’s like a woman threatening to leave, she says ‘GOODBYE’ but she doesn’t really mean goodbye, instead she wants to be chased. Be done & be done coz you really are done. Extricate your very presence from the environment, trust yourself & mean business. Do it for YOU, not to prove some invisible egomaniacal point, because the person causing the damage is clearly not listening or willing to adhere to the ‘rules of engagement’ in the relationship. This frustration now results in you then resorting to moving your lamenting to another base, a base that validates your feelings & experiences. You’re in search of your next hit of dopamine & off to your closest, most loyal buddy you run, to complain once again.

My issue is not so much with the person causing the damage though. MY ISSUE IS WITH YOU!! So, what am getting at here? 1. WAKE UP TO THE REALITY THAT YOU ARE MAKING A CHOICE TO STAY IN A SITUATION WHERE DISRESPECT IS CONSTANTLY THE BONE OF CONTENTION. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, 2. STOP THE TEMPORARY, MAKE-SHIFT BAND-AIDING YOU GET FROM YOUR COMMUNITY OF SUPPORTERS.

Now here’s the kicker question,… Is it really fair to treat the people in your corner, the ones spurring you on, the ones really wanting you to thrive & trounce every hurdle, the genuine ones listening with no judgment, the ones empathetically there for you when the wheels keep coming off, is it fair for them to watch you deteriorate & constantly, by choice, go through heartache, dissatisfaction, & mediocrity in relationship when you both know you could do better? Is it fair to treat these people like your dumpster or your trashcan? If I’m being frank here, THAT’S HOW YOU’RE TREATING THEM, THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE DOING! You’re using them as an outlet to blow off steam. Coz, you’re gonna go off & do whatever the heck you wanna do anyway right?!

They’re like your own personalized buffer. They are as much involved in the relationship as you are, except they don’t get to benefit from the fun parts of the relationship, they only get the trashy ventilations & frustrations. They get the real talk, the stuff that you’re too afraid to confront the catalyst of your inner warfare about. You pussyfoot, & do emotional gymnastics all around the real issue out of fear of losing them or out of dreading the residual, awkward air that would be left between you after being real. These ‘helpers’ hear all about the dysregulation of your central nervous system, & how you’ve now developed an overactive, hyper vigilant sympathetic nervous system while floundering in this pernicious situation. Yet, the person getting the weekends away & the showers of love & affection is the one causing the perpetual emotional anarchy in the first place. Believe me, I get this! I was one of these people. My friends & family love me, so they would openly welcome me into their spaces to blow off steam, they’d give me advice & speak sound logic into me, only for me to go on my merry way again. After I’ve disposed all of my garbage onto them, feeling lighter & energized, ready to face said relationship with new vigour & perspective, I’d mount this toxic horse once again & off into the proverbial, delusional sunset I go, until the next bout of the same, emotionally debilitating, disrespect comes down my chimney, surprising me like an early Christmas present, I didn’t ask for. FAULTY ITEM, RETURN TO SENDER!

DON’T DO THIS TO PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU. They are not trashcans & they are not infinite reservoirs of support either. Especially, not after the same encounters continuously resurfaces. Unbeknownst to you, they are tiring. You are siphoning precious capital from people who themselves are limited to a finite supply of resources stored up for their own life struggles. They give these ‘energy boosters’ away for free because they genuinely love you, yet you’re abusing it, throwing it away, wasting it. They won’t be full for you forever. They will start to fatigue.

The way I see it, these people are being framed & they’re doing the time for crimes they didn’t commit. They have solid alibis, but on the night of the murder the evidence stacked against them were unfortunately love, care, concern, altruism & these pieces of evidence sufficed to convict the martyrs, locking them away, & serving them with an unjust sentence. And you know what else, FOR YOU, they’d do it again & again until there was nothing left.

So, heal, strengthen your resolve, so you’d know how to LOVE YOURSELF, openheartedly accept what you know you deserve, walk out of situations you DO NOT DESERVE & love on those who love you from a truly authentic place. The true, newfound love for yourself will teach you to see the genuine love in others, who are trying to rescue you from your current unloved self!