hackles

One of my favorite quotes is by Nelson Mandela. He says “before you can do things for other people, you have to be the kind of person who gets things done.” I read that at a young age and it has stuck with me since.

 

I am a doer. I am a person who gets things done. However that slipped for a while and I became a person who was treading water in my own life, while trying to help someone else who was decidedly NOT a doer. This is a dead end. If you try to give to a person like that, they will suck you dry. Literally, they will co-opt your energy and motivation and then bleed it out of you until you have nothing at all left for yourself or your own life and needs. It’s a slow burn, kind of like the frog in the pot of boiling water. By the time it’s too hot to stand, it’s too late to jump out.

 

I managed to jump out of that pot and am running – literally – as far away as humanly possible from the vacuous existence that is an unappreciative, unmotivated, soul sucker. They are sneaky that kind, and I have now learned how to spot and avoid the bullshit and the talking. Have you ever noticed how many people in the world are legitimately full of shit? It’s mind-blowing. I no longer trust a damn thing anyone tells me because once you’re lied to for years from the inside and exploited in a negative and destructive way, you get your hackles up.

 

Hackles up.

Once you get away from the mess of prolonged interaction with a leech though, it's really flabbergasting how much you actually have left for yourself, despite the fact that you may not know what to do with yourself at first. I'm still uncovering new things and new opportunities. Seems to be endless, the amount of things I can now do and what is surprisingly not endless is the overall feeling of anger. I think now, it's more a humorous disgust and a "what the fuck was I thinking" sort of thing.

And yes, I loathe the person who stole from me, but you know, what goes around comes back around, so I don't feel that bad.