Maybe everyone does this- when someone attacks me in a hurtful way- saying something mean to me- I want to defend myself; I want to protect myself, fight back, stand my ground…but what really happens is I hear them, and know they are right.

It’s never easy when to be called out about our behavior, attitude or actions.  No one likes their flaws to be used against them or exposed.  Having to stick up for yourself sucks. But, truth is, if we don’t, no one else will. Truth is also that usually they are right and we know it.  Yet we fight back, launch an attack of defense or maybe even try to turn the tables and get ugly with them; you know the old the best offense is a defense—throw stone for stone.

Not me, I have finally learned that when someone I love attacks me, I try very hard not to attack back; I don’t pull all the rabbits out of the hat that I have hidden to use against them to hurt them like they are hurting me…I know how bad it hurts to have my flaws exposed, twisted, perverted and used against me. It is not fun, and most people do not fight fair.

Maybe this is a character flaw of mine, but when someone attacks me, in my head I am usually agreeing with them on some level.  That’s why it hurts so badly.  I wish I was one of those really strong people with a thick skin that can stick up for themselves and not let harmful words permeate and paralyze them; but I am not. Never have been, guess I never will be…I have many childhood memories of being picked on and called out-and as scrappy as I was, as much of a fighter as I was, those words would cut into my heart like a sharp knife and I would not forget them. I took it very personally.

One day in high school I was walking down the hall.  I heard some girl calling out: “Slut, there’s that slut!” I was walking alone-she was talking to me. I was scared to death at that moment. The girl was a girl I knew pretty well; she and her boyfriend had just broken up, or so he said…so he had told me…I had known her boyfriend for many years through junior high-he was at a party I was at and told me all about it…he acted interested in me, he had liked me all through jr. high—he gave me a ride home—dropped me at my house, and drove straight to her house to tell her he had been with me…and here it was Monday at school and she was calling me a slut!  I felt like a slut and I had not even done anything.  I was about as “prude” as a girl could be in high school.  He cowered next to her as she attacked me; this guy, an old friend did not say one word as she poked me in the chest and accused me of all sorts of things.  I took it, wanted to kill him, not her.  Not her fault he was a lying snake in the grass.  I survived, my dance teacher helped pull me together and got us two girls together and cleared up the mess.  I moved away the next week. Surviving my worst high school nightmare was the icing on a messed up cake, and I bailed.

Fast forward a gazillion years-after many losses, much heartache, being and feeling abandoned, betrayed, and alone-I take it very seriously when someone I love says hurtful things to me.  I am flawed from the years of human abuse that we all have to live with; funny thing is, I am the first one to stand up and fight for the underdog-always the one who goes ahead in a crowd and keeps others calm in a bad situation.  I am called: confident, independent, headstrong, tenacious, stubborn and strong—I am also called: cold, detached, clingy, ungrateful and unattached…Truth is—I AM ALL OF THESE THINGS!  And sometimes, when someone I love feels the need to point out my flaws and use them against me because they can’t handle them—it hurts, it hurts very badly and my human soft strong loving spirit wants to bail-move away and quit.

I’m working on my weaknesses, trying to keep my strengths in check as not to overwhelm the world with my tenacious headstrong independent often mouthy personality—I’m trying to love others in the process and it is not so easy at times.  It is usually those we love the most who hurt us the most and expose our flaws and use them against us.  I don’t know, maybe, just maybe the next time you are ready to rip someone you love to shreds you will remember the words of a stubborn confident headstrong woman who gets her spirit chipped away a little every time someone calls her out and you will NOT attack, but maybe just maybe you will be kind and remember they already know all about their flaws…

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