'A' Words
Trigger Warning: Some words, statements and or phrases may be confused with victim blaming. I admit it's a thin line across the board with this particular topic and it's my theory that the sensitivity of the subject is the very reason it's not talked about very much, if at all. As a matter of fact, I've seen cases where people avoid it like the plague! This is the very reason I'm bringing it up now.
Alright, now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, let’s get down to the real business. I’m tempted to offer a prize to anyone who actually gets through this entire post because it’s long and a rough one. But very necessary. With that said, in honor of my favorite salutation, “Today’s letter is the letter ‘A’, brought to you by the words Accountability, Acceptance, and Awareness.”
I feel like it’s safe to say “we all want a good life.” What that means for each person is relative and largely based on their perspective of things. Remember, this is just my opinion, based on my own experience, and it’s ok if someone disagrees. No one is gonna die.
While our definitions of the good life may differ, there is at least one common denominator, if we aren’t doing what it takes to create a “good-life” for ourselves, that vision is nothing more than a delusion. Now this part in itself can be broken down into at least three factors that crossed my mind, just that fast. We’ll eventually get to those, but this particular entry focuses on the part about how our choices form our life. Every. Single. Choice.
I recently made the last promise I couldn’t keep. I know it’s the last one because based of how I feel right now, I know for a fact that I don’t want to feel like this again. The reason I feel so crappy is because this was yet again, an awkward situation that I could have avoided. I’ve said this before and it keeps coming up because it has affected so many areas of my life in a negative way; I have a problem with over commitment, and it’s possible that there is a touch of delusion in regards to how much I can achieve in a day mixed up in there. And with that said I already need a smoke break, I am NOT trying to feel these feelings right now and my codependency is coming through as I write this. (Sound: Homer Simpson running to the car).
The Promise Breaker…
I’m just over a year into starting from semi-scratch for technically the third time, I’ve finally become completely fed up with the results that I have been getting from making promises that I can’t keep. I’m gonna have to get real basic on this one because a lot lessons that I’m learning here in my late thirties, are considered to be Adolescent 101, and oh the fuck well at this point cause I’m over myself enough to do the work to achieve and display something new and different.
When it comes to this most recent let-down, I was unable to keep my promise because it was made based on a third party. Have you ever made a promise to someone based on the expectation of someone else paying a loan back, your paycheck being deposited at 9:00 am exactly, or something as simple as someone else showing up on time to an event? And then not only did you wake up to the same balance from yesterday, but you also have pending, random ass charges for shit you forgot about? Yeah, true story. There’s a group of very responsible adults judging me as we speak, listing in their head the many reasons I should know better lol.
“You so stupid why would you do that.”
“Never spend money you don’t have.”
“Learn how to say no.”
And the list of snobby auntie rebuttals go on.
Those are ALL the wrong questions to ask.
The right questions, and the questions that I asked myself this morning were;
“JJ why you keep doing this to yourself?”
“What do you have to do so this doesn’t happen again?”
I say this because whatever the response is to those questions, that response is your first step. Whether it’s the solution or a bit of direction towards the solutions. Regardless, it’s much better than repeating the same behaviors that caused the problem in the first place, because the answers to the useless questions are just repeating what happened.
Loose grammar, read best in the voice of your favorite O.G.
See, all that extra shit that people be talking ain’t even necessary, that’s another thing I’ve figured out. Yes, it takes a little digging to get the root of the problem. The problem is most people are digging far as fuck from the damn problem, lets call it a ‘weed’, because they really don’t want to deal with it. In this case, asking the wrong questions is like using the wrong tool for the job along with misplaced effort. It’s illusive in the sense that answering the easy yet unnecessary questions can make us feel like we’re getting somewhere, but really it’s just a ride on a hamster’s wheel.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“Because I’m tired.”
“Yeah girl get your rest.”
KNOWING this same friend owes you money by the way. I think it would’ve been a good idea in this situation to ask if homegirl was o.k.? And then make the next move based off her response. Does she need help? Does she need a pep talk? Think about whether or not your responses are encouraging your friend to make her life better or worse. This is why enabling needs to be checked.
This also reminds me of how a lot of us sisters (of all colors, yes y’all too) fall into that trauma bond trap that appears to be a friendship. Tell me this ain’t familiar…
Ringtone
“Hey girl what’s up?”
“Girl nothing just sick of [insert name], he [insert action], and I just can’t take it anymore.”
“Shiiit girl just leave his ass, don’t you do every thing and he still [insert this, that, and the third], He don’t appreciate you I woulda’ been gone.”
I’ve seen this conversation go the same way regardless of what “this, that, and the third” even was. I mean a mf’er coulda just went golfing with the fellas and here come our best friend talking about how he don’t respect you because his one hobby takes up one Saturday morning. Out of seven days and nights, one Saturday morning has you on the verge of being ready to give it all up. “Bitch if you don’t get you a hobby!”. That’s what I would’ve jokingly said.
On the flip side, some of these dudes do need to be “left”, but that’s only after we’ve made the determination that “hey, I’m doing my part and I’m the only one doing my part and he don’t even want no parts.” Not all guys are shit holes so I think it’s important that we stop evaluating our circumstances based on superficial things that couldn’t matter less in the future.
Some things are obviously, not all of our fault, just the part where we let things linger on, ignoring red flag after red flag. I feel like this is the reason asking the right questions are so important. Especially if you have a chronic problem with accountability such as I’ve had. Those personal rhetorical questions really help us get to the bottom of things.
My method of accepting accountability starts with “what was the essential cause?”. Did he slap the hell outa you because you were avidly speaking to him in a emasculating tone? Or was it because he has anger issues that were never addressed as a kid and he slaps people to relieve stress? If you answered yes to either of those questions, it’s definitely time to reevaluate. Because we all know its not cool to slap people. It’s actually very bad. But from here, I believe the right questions should get you to think about why you even have to ask those questions. If this was my situation, and it has been - I’m not proud, I would and have asked myself “What is it about boundaries that you can’t enforce them JJ?” Ultimately, and here’s where I start sounding a little Kanye-ish. With the exception of extreme cases, I have to say, we chose that for ourselves.
Now here come all the Gastons, ready to kill the harmless Beast.
But seriously, I believe that every time we choose to let someone get away with crossing the line, we basically give them an opportunity to do it again. I talk about second chances in another post, but here we’re focusing on how by not enforcing our personal boundaries we are not expressing accountability.
I feel like this is going to be the new buzzword, primarily among the fellas because that’s all I’m hearing guys talk about. This most recent guy I’ve been just-more-than talking to deemed me as one who lacked accountability before I had even committed my first offense. I mean, he was right and that’s why I’ve decided that this would be another point of course correction for me, but the fact that it came up so early in our getting-to-know each other, I could tell that he was tired of that behavior before he knew I even existed.
“What am I projecting that makes people feel like it’s ok to mistreat me?”
WOO! This was a big one for me. This is that thin line between victimhood and taking that authority that I was talking about earlier. I’ve been a victim of a lot of things that all boil down to disrespect. By the time I was in my mid thirties it started to get old. This lead to a dormant part of my character coming to surface, one that I’ve suppressed since childhood. My smart. ass. mouth. I learned at a very young age to watch who the fuck I was talking to. My mother who I love, now at least, put a muzzle on that shit in the beginning, and I’m talking around the age of four when I first started expressing my opinion. Sometimes she and my stepdad would tag team. The problem with that is that I never learned how to have real discussion with those who felt different about certain things than I did. My parents showed me through their responses, how to shrink myself out of fear of conflict. ‘Watching my mouth’ out of fear of being hit by one of my parents translated to watching my mouth out of fear of being hit by my husband, or whichever insecure angry man I was with at the time. I went into my relationships without a voice. And I don’t know if anyone else has been successful enforcing their personal boundaries with silence only, but me not speaking up for myself gave many people, especially the unhealthy men I once attracted, a clear path to their preferred form of abuse.
Argh! For SO long I lived like this, not making conscious choices for myself. Letting the man in my life take the lead when he was uncapable of handling the responsibility that comes with any level of leadership. Men who needed to feel a strong sense of control flocked to me. Attractive men, unattractive men, financially stable men, men who were still in and out of their parent’s home, men who were in and out of their own home, the list goes on. In every relationship, I went wrong with not having boundaries. As soon as they smelled that, the fangs came out and the emotional games commenced.
I knew when I took on this topic it was going to be a long one, they’re just so many layers man, so many layers. We’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg on the ‘A’ words. And we’re going to get through this. Those of us who are serious about change and being the change you want to see ‘gonna ride with me!’, so stay tuned, there’s much, much more.
