No Excuses, No Explanations: Owning who you are
Recently, two people disrespected me.
Person number 1: I don’t care for any interactions and haven’t spoken to them since the disrespect and attack on my character. Person number 2: I have decided to continue our relationship for reasons I won't disclose here. I want you to trust that my reasons are valid.
However, I have decided to create distance between myself and person number 2, a sort of subtle change to the dynamic of our relationship.
The more I think about these two events, the angrier I get
I get angry at myself, strange, I know. The normal reaction is to get angry at the person who disrespected you, but I chose the opposite. I am angry at myself, not because I blame myself for the disrespect but because I didn’t see it coming. I ask myself, why didn’t I see it coming? Why didn’t my instinct tell me these two people couldn’t stand me? Was I this blind? Or was I self- absorbed?
Then I realized something very important. I wasn’t being truthful to myself about who I am and how I view the world. Whenever people gave me a compliment, I always tried to play it down. I tried to make myself small to avoid discomforting others. I wanted to be labelled as ‘down to earth.’
These people who disrespected me saw all the amazing aspects of me, and they saw that I wasn’t willing to accept it. This placed a strain on our relationship. I think that somewhere in their minds, they knew I was more amazing than I was letting on. This made them see me as fake, and the ‘fakeness’ got annoying for them.
When they disrespected me, they did it because I allowed them to believe that it was possible to speak to me in that manner. If I was decrediting myself and pushing away or hiding my blessings and gifts, it’s fair that they would assume I would continue to do that when they talked down or disrespected me. By trying so hard to be labelled as down-to-earth, I was showing people what I am willing to accept and how I want to be treated.
How this all came to the forefront
I met a woman. I thought she came off strong. She asked me within two seconds of meeting me, “So what do your children identify as?” My kids are interracial, by the way.
I thought it a silly question. I wondered who asks such a strong but silly question upon the first meeting. But something amazing happened a day or two after this encounter. I was disrespected, and then it all came together. The person who asked me the silly question was unapologetic about who she is and what she believes. You may or may not agree with her beliefs, but at least she stands for something and shouts it from the roof. When she asked me the question, I skirted around the answer. Silly of me, I know. Only, it was the only way I could deal with such a strange question at the time.
Moral of the story
I soon realized I was stumped by the woman’s callousness and skirted around her question because I stood for nothing. Had I had a clear idea of what I believed and was I unapologetically owning my beliefs as she was, my answer would have been definitive, direct, and quite sharp. So, it all came together. The same would have happened when I got disrespected if I was owning who I was. Further, because these two people who disrespected me spoke to me regularly, they would have known not to cross my boundaries because I would have expressed myself in a way that highlights the line drawn in the sand.
Lessons
Stop apologizing when someone says to me in an accusatory manner that I am smart or good-looking, or elegant, etc. They must have a reason for thinking such. So, instead of downplaying and trying to avert these types of comments. I decided to take these statements as compliments and simply say thank you, regardless of the tone of the person who said it. Because these happen to be things that I believe about myself, why run from it?
Further, stop apologizing when I haven’t done anything wrong.
Be honest - Be honest about my beliefs and less of a chameleon who stays quiet and tries to tweak her beliefs so as not to ruffle feathers.
Be honest about how I feel about myself and stop trying to pretend I am less smart, less successful, less fabulous than I am because I want to be liked.
Most important of all
Learn that trying to make myself small for the sake of others is condescending to them. It makes people feel that I think they are dumb and so I am dumbing myself down because I feel I am above them. This is the definition of looking at the same situation from a different angle. My initial angle was one of lack and pity disguised as humility. This new angle is one of abundance and service. By showing people my true self, they can choose to hate me or see my strength and successes as motivators. And, if they choose to hate me, of the 8 billion people in the world, one short isn’t noteworthy.
