lies – Rosie Culture

After a break up, you want to blame everyone else but yourself. You want to blame the girl he cheated on you with. You want to blame your family for not telling you sooner that he sucked. You want to blame your friends for not pulling you away. You want to blame him for the person that he is.

But in the end, when all is said and done, I really can’t blame anyone but myself. I can’t blame anyone else for the way I began to change to fit the mold of my relationship. The way I stopped caring about myself, the way I made the world spin around this “perfect love.”

I can’t blame the girl he cheated on me with, she’s just another victim to his tricks. And I can’t blame my friends and family because we all know I just wouldn’t listen.

I can’t blame him for what he did to me. Because I let him cause me that pain. I let someone treat me like dirt. I let the relationship consume me to the point where I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I’m not someone who likes to fight, I’m not someone who wants drama, I’m not someone who dedicates their entire life and soul to someone else. I can’t blame anyone but myself for becoming that person.

It’s true you brought out the worst in me and it’s true you treated me poorly – but I can’t blame anyone but myself.

And in that sense, I owe everything to myself. Because I am stronger, better, more aware. I moved on from those past relationships and became the person I wanted to be again.

I owe a lot to my family, I owe a lot to my friends, I owe a lot to the people that broke me down so far that I had to pick myself up again. Mostly I owe it all to myself. I did it, I recovered, and I am better.

And while I can’t blame anyone but myself, I also can praise myself. And congratulate myself. And be proud of myself. Because when people knock you down, you can pick yourself up eventually and that’s all that really matters. That you keep moving forward.

photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gabrielap93/

It happens to the best of us, we put up a wall and we have no idea how to knock it down.

Someone along the way hurt you enough or broke your heart enough for you to start building brick by brick. An indestructible shield around yourself so that no one could get through like that again. So no one could ever cause that kind of damage to you again.

You probably let that wall down a few times since the initial heartache. Believing that this time it would be different, that this time you could handle it, that this time there would only be love and not lies. But this just lead to you building that wall with stronger materials. Taller and wider and stronger. Now there really is no way around it.

Being vulnerable is a huge part of a relationship. The difference between someone being your friend and someone being your significant other has mainly to do how open and comfortable you are with them. If you can’t reveal your blackened and dusty secrets to them – who can you tell?

Now so many of us don’t know how to be vulnerable anymore. Everything we do in the dating world is hidden behind a facade – whether we mean to or not. Yeah, it would be great to connect someone on that level. It would be amazing to dig up the things you’ve buried so far deep in yourself because you didn’t have anyone to tell.

But how do you know when someone deserves this information? And how do you know what they’re going to do with it? They could cherish it and understand you – forming a bond and a love that will make your life bliss. Or they could crush it and ignore you – do what everyone else did and leave you in the dark.

Not being vulnerable will hinder your relationships. I often find myself answering questions generically rather than thoughtfully saying what I’m thinking because I don’t see the point. You can ask me how my day is going and I can either tell you how it really is. How I’m really bummed today because it’s raining, I had awful nightmares and didn’t sleep, I’m just overall cranky. Or I can tell you it’s fine. Because are you really going to fix my bad day – do you really even care?

They say the right person will knock down your wall. They’ll take their hammer and chip away at the hard pieces of you. But if you have no vulnerability left – will that person ever even get close enough?

photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lockechrisj/

Tag: lies

I Can’t Blame Anyone But Myself

Forgetting How To Be Vulnerable