If you’re getting notified about this, FYI, this post is old.
Picking up from yesterday –
And it has been AMAZING to get back into the real normal world where I don’t have to write a dissertation if I’d like to just say “thanks” when someone buys me a drink or something small. It’s SO nice to be able to just be nice again and not be on edge about it.
I have a friend who jokes that I’m so weirdly nice and trusting to so many strangers that someday I’m gonna die by becoming someone’s lamp… I’m gonna trust some stranger, and I’m gonna be murdered, and the murderer will stretch out my skin and I’ll be someone’s lamp. [Kind of a dark joke, huh? haha!]
Anyway, my stance on it has always been sort of, “Well, I’d rather be a lamp than a grumpalicious sad person.”
…Buuut it weirdly kinda feels like my brain has been stretched over a lamp (in some ways)! It felt so tortuous to be around sexual assault guy. And after going through that, I think there was definitely a part of me that just cried in my room and was like, “This feels teeeeeerrible. I don’t want to be a lamp! I don’t want to be a lamp!”
But. I like living out loud. And I like meeting people. And I like being nice. And I think I’m finally working back to the idea that I’d rather be a lamp than a grumpalicious sad person. (I mean, I’d rather just be a nice person who has a good life and doesn’t become a lamp!)
But, while niceness, and sincerity, and empathy seemed to hurt me (a LOT – a lot, a lot) with him, they have also enriched my life in general. A
And while I’m going out more in the world now and interacting with people, it’s definitely this weird thing of [*without really thinking about it, do something nice, like I’m used to, then boom! have a shooting pain of “Wait, be careful!” and then have a calming thought of “you’re okay, you’re okay.”*]
He is the outlier. He was the one who treated me unlike anything that’s ever been even close to acceptable. He’s the story that’s off. He’s not the norm. So, I don’t have to change myself to fit his world.
***I don’t have to change myself to fit his world.***
[I just wanted to say that one more time, because it felt important to me…]
I’ve lived in the world for many years before him (and hopefully many after as well). The world is not his.
There was no winning with him. It did not matter what you did. I couldn’t find a way to be perfect enough. Maybe somehow someone else could. I couldn’t. But I don’t have to relive “how could I act now to make that unhappen?!”
It can’t unhappen. There is no special way that I can act now to make it unhappen. So, I might as well go back to joy and rainbows and butterflies. My world, my personality, my heart doesn’t have to change because of him. Nothing of mine has to change because of him.
[This is part of the sexual assault series]