Do This When Someone You Love Fucks You Over

Forgive yourself for acting “crazy” when someone you love is treating you like shit. It’s your brains natural response to a threat.

Don’t expect the other person to be even remotely sensitive enough to understand that. Do not expect the other person to have the warmth and compassion to cater to the wounds they created. Expect them to blame you. Expect them to get angry that you are hurt by the choices they made. This will invalidate your experience to the fullest extent, making you feel even more “crazy.” (PSA: next time you or anyone you know is called “crazy” – stick up for yourself and them. #StopCallingPeopleCrazy2018.)

Shaming people for having emotional triggers set off by insensitive and hypocritical power-figures is disgusting and cruel. And if it’s 2018 and you haven’t read about the number one sign of sociopaths…then spoiler alert: it’s the inability to process or empathize with other people’s emotions. Your emotional roller coaster may just be a mirror for their own inability to practice compassion even towards themselves.

You should not be blamed for their life devoid of warmth and emotion, but you will be. Do not expect them to have any rational ability to understand this. Their experiences dictated who they became. Your experiences dictated you. And sometimes meeting people where they are at, means you meet them when they are the most lost version of themselves. Let their stark defense of their choices be a clue to you. Their insistence on being right is their ego showing off and doing backflips. It’s their egos way of protecting their precious hurt – the only foundation they have. The self-righteous bullying should be your first clue that you are not going to be able to use emotional clarity and empathy to get the love you deeply desire from them. They are not able to give it. Desiring love from another person does NOT make you crazy. It makes you a human.

Sometimes meeting people where they are at means meeting them – and walking away.

It is very sad that you will be made out to be the victim, and then simultaneously be ridiculed for being the victim.

It is not your responsibility to understand them. And unfortunately, it is not their responsibility to understand you either. Your responsibility rests with you and your reaction to the very real threat standing in front of you.

Notice the grief, the pain, the sorrow. Allow the misery to flow through you like bitter honey in whatever pace it demands. Hours, days, weeks. Be gentle with yourself in the way they couldn’t be.

Find every avenue possible to safely express the very real emotions coming up for you. Therapy, writing, cooking, walking, yoga. Put on a garbage bag and dance around your living room blasting Kelly Clarkson, an act Regena Thomashauer refers to as “swamping.”

Get cozy with the pain, the loss, the anguish. It is a death. The death of a love, a relationship, and a trust.

You trusted this person to love you, even when things became uncomfortable or difficult. You trusted this person to recognize you, see you, value you. And when every cell in your body wants to fire and scream and cry and wallow in the worthlessness – you must pause. You must take a deep breath and make a choice at that moment like your life depends on it. Because it does.

Will you allow this person to determine your worth? Will you allow someone else’s inability to love you determine how loveable you are? This is the moment where you will look at the tools in your toolbox, and you will realize the only tool left is you.

This is a burden. And it is a gift.

How beautiful that you do not have to rely on anyone or anything else to produce the worth and love you deeply desire and deserve.

This person will hurt you. They will blame you for being hurt by their insensitive and brash actions. Grieve. Mourn. Cry. Wail. Scream. Shake. Collapse.

And then say thank you.

Thank you for releasing me from the false ideal that my worth was ever predicated on someone else’s ability to see it. Feel it. Know it.

They will never know your worth. Because it is not their responsibility. It is yours. And the river of grief and sorrow will soon lead you to an ocean. An infinite well of compassion and self-love and worth. And you will stand on the edge of the retreating tide with the sand in between your toes, and your heels firmly planted in the uncertain earth. The early red sun warming your face. Dancing on your eyelids. A soft breeze whispering a song of truth your ears have longed to hear.

And you will be free.