Changing

The thing is that a lot is changing. 
And I haven't really grieved how things used to be. 
I've always had a hard time with grieving.
Because I get stuck in some of the stages. 

One of the stages is denial. 
I got stuck here, lots of times. 
When I finally accept that things have changed.... 
I sometimes get sad that they can't go back to the way things were. 
But being sad about that isn't helping me move forward. 

The thing is that I didn't fully appreciate things
when they were good. 
I took a lot of goodness for granted in my life
by focusing on being sad
that I couldn't make things even better
or being sad that there were things I wanted to be good, but weren't. 
Instead of focusing on what I had that was good. 

Kind of like how we have taken people for granted. 
Thinking that they are always going to be around. They aren't. 
I've been taken for granted. Many f*cking times. 
It's like people think I'm always going to be around. 
Because I care. And I want to be there. 
But that doesn't mean that I have to be there. 

I could let people struggle though their own sh*t
WITHOUT my help. I could. 
Just like others let me struggle through MY sh*t 
WITHOUT their help. 

Like "Fine! You don't want my help? You don't have to take it!"
And then I still feel guilty AF because I know
that I could still keep offering it
even though they still keep refusing it. 

But there were times I've been helpful. 
And times I've just made things worse. 
For myself and for others I was trying to help. 

"Until you know how to help, you'll make things worse."
Someone told me this, recently. 

It's like we can't help people who are struggling
by struggling with them. 

Someone who was trying to help me in unhelpful ways
kept saying: "I keep showing you the door, 
but you keep slamming it shut."
Is that MY door? Or is it YOUR door?
Maybe I don't want to go through YOUR door. 
Maybe MY door is further down the hall.
And I kept trying to explain that to him. 
But he didn't want to listen to me. 
Hard to help someone when we don't listen to them. 
But hard to be helped when we don't listen, too. 
And to listen, we have to want to listen. 

I had someone keep saying:
"You only hear what you want to hear."
How can you tell someone that
when you don't know what they want to hear?
And how do you know what they are hearing?
Maybe they are hearing sh*t they don't want to hear. 
Like: "Dress better so I can stand to look at you!"

But there are times I wasn't ready to hear what I was being told. 
Partly because I wasn't ready to accept what I was being told. 
Even though it was the truth....
And partly because I had a "who tf are you to tell me?!" attitude. 
Which never got me anywhere.... 

The truth is the truth no matter who tells us.... 
Whether or not we are ready or willing to accept it. 
No matter how we feel about it. 
No matter how it looks. 
No matter how we take it. 
It's still the truth. 

But... There are ways to say it without being MEAN.
Like we don't have to beat someone with it. 
But we don't have to take it as a beating when it's not. 

But are we supposed to be worried about how someone's going to take it?
When they keep taking it the wrong way?

There were times people didn't tell me the truth
because they didn't know how I would take it
and they didn't want me to take it the wrong way. 
And they assumed that I would. 

But there are times that I did take it the wrong way.
Because that was the only way I knew how to take it. 
I didn't know that there was any other way to take it. 
And I couldn't take a lot of things. 
A lot of things broke me
because I couldn't take it. 

And there were times I was forced to take it. 
And didn't know how to. 
So I took it, but it affected me. 
In ways that I still can't really explain to this day. 
Because I didn't know how to take it. 

There's no "manual" on how to take things. 
But knowing that we don't have to take it
the way we took it.... Actually helps us. 

Because often... The way we take things
either helps us or really f*cking doesn't. 

And it took me a long time to figure that out. 

"It's a joke, not a d*ck. Don't take it so hard." Heh.
But are we supposed to take something as a joke
when it's not funny?

Like I was seeing someone for a while
who was actually getting mad at me for not having sex with him. 
But him getting mad at me for that
wasn't making me want to have sex with him.... 
And because I wasn't having sex with him
he got it elsewhere
which wasn't making me want to get it from him. 

Guys getting mad at girls for not wanting to have sex
does not make them want to have sex. 

Just like how girls getting mad at guys for not wanting to have sex
does not make them want to have sex. 

Like "all I have to do is make them feel bad enough 
about not wanting to do it
to get them to do it." 
Doesn't work that way. 

It's okay for not wanting to have sex. 
No matter who gets mad that you don't want to. 
Why get mad about that?
Just because someone made a choice
that you didn't want them to make?

"If they wanted to, they would."
But just because we want to, doesn't mean we should.
Both of these I've struggled accepting.

Like it is easy to deny something so they do it because it's easy. 
But... Just because it's harder to accept something
does it mean we shouldn't because it's hard?

Unless it's a d*ck when we don't want to have sex....
But you get my point?

It's hard for people to accept things that they don't want to. 
And there are things people refuse to accept. 
I couldn't learn some things because I wouldn't accept some things. 
Some truths about myself..... 
Because looking at yourself is HARD. 
Facing some things about yourself isn't easy..... 
But how do you learn? 
If you are unwilling to look at yourself?
Or face things about yourself?

But when our ego is in the way.... 
All we see is through the filter of the ego. 
We see so many things in so many distorted ways. 
How can we take something the right way
when we see it the wrong way?