The Price Of Finally Choosing Yourself
By Gina Clingan
Earlier this week, someone said to me, “You’ve shown your true colors. I mean, look at you. You’re such a bitch!”
Being told this by someone I no longer considered to be a friend was actually very validating. It confirmed that my tolerance level and threshold for bullshit had shifted and people were noticing. I was finally growing into the person I have worked so hard to become, and my colors were finally visible to the very person I had been begging to see me for years. Now that they had finally pulled their head out of their own ass for long enough to actually look at me, they realized that the pigments of my boundaries, self-love, and self-respect didn’t appeal to them because they could no longer benefit from who I was becoming.
I suppose this is the price of finally choosing yourself. You will lose the people who don’t benefit from you investing energy into your own well-being, instead of them, for a change. When you love yourself and are willing to protect and stand up for your own growth, they won’t like it. They will tell you that you’re a bitch, when the truth is, you just have boundaries now.
They’ll say you have a superiority complex because you refuse to let them continue to drag you down with them while they choose to remain stagnant. They’ll call you judgmental because you refuse to be another target for them to project their own unresolved issues and self-resentment onto. They will feel threatened by your security within your own company and tell you that you should be ashamed of your ability to step away from lifelong relationships that no longer serve you. They will be horrified by your confidence, as well as the home you have found within yourself when you realize that you don’t need them.
For the first time, they will actually be afraid of losing you. They will tell you there’s something wrong with you because, for the first time, you are no longer afraid of losing them. They will try to shift the blame onto you when they realize that they have allowed themselves to become disposable. They will tell you that you are the problem instead of admitting that they didn’t contribute to your relationship, because they were too busy taking it for granted to give you a reason to stay. They will paint you as the villain for letting go, instead of admitting that they never gave you anything to hold onto. They will call you a bitch because you refuse to continue choosing them when they won’t even put the effort into choosing themselves.
So, here’s to reclaiming all of the energy that you invested into them and redirecting it back into yourself. Here’s to choosing yourself and growing freely in the space you no longer have to waste on them, using their harsh words as fertilizer. All that ever came out of their mouth was just a bunch of bullshit anyway.