Learning To Choose Wisely

I had a dream last night about being abandoned at a middle-of-nowhere gas station by a girl who was supposed to be my closest friend.

Unfortunately, it's a scenario that could have easily happened in real life- especially if I was still close with the girl in question. She was someone I was extremely close to in my teenage years, a girl who made me feel accepted, even loved- before she screwed me over the first time she found a boyfriend. Suddenly she wanted nothing to do with me or her other friends. Her boyfriend didn't like her friends, and so she wasn't going to risk being dumped. She dumped all of her friends instead, including yours truly. But it didn't stop there- she didn't just dump us, but she and her new bf made it their new mission to bully us daily. Verbally and physically. It was a complete betrayal on her part.

And this isn't the only time a former "friend" has turned on me like a scorpion. I can recall at least 5 or 6 more people who used to be very close to me and used that to stab me in the back later.

Having that dream last night made me realize how often I choose the wrong kinds of people to be in my life. Once again, I blame my parents. I realize how cliched it is to blame your parents for everything that goes wrong in your life- but there's a grain of truth in every cliche. My parents were abusive and neglectful. I never learned to love myself or respect myself. My sense of self was discouraged from developing, and I have suffered for it ever since.

When you have been treated like you don't matter for the entirety of your life, you learn that you don't matter. You allow people to treat you any way they like, because well, you must deserve that. You tolerate the abuse, the manipulation, the cruel verbal jabs at your expense that are passed off thinly as "jokes". False friends also have a tendency to find humor in publicly humiliating you. They also feel free to use or "borrow" your things, as though asking for your permission is not needed (because obviously you don't matter). Every single behavior I have listed here are ways that I learned to be okay with because that's how I was treated by my parents.

I want to change the tolerance I have for people who just use and abuse, I don't want to be a doormat anymore, and I certainly don't want to repeat the cycle of choosing the wrong people in my life just because I hate myself. I will make it a point to set boundaries and I will not accept anyone in my life who can't treat me the way I treat others- with respect, kindness, and good intent.