Picking Yourself Up

I’ve been super bad about blogging lately, but I’ve made a promise to myself to not blog while angry EVER and I’ve been mighty angry as of late. There are a lot of things that haven’t been going so well, work related stressors, family issues, etc. and that contributes to being generally in a foul mood. While people might not see that externally, my internal mood tends to spill out when I’m writing. I made the promise to myself to not spew my negativity on the internet, so I apologize for my self-imposed hiatus.

BUT! I’m back and I want to use one of my latest experiences as a discussion starter or even just a thought starter J I recently went through a huge betrayal-type situation. I had a close friend who I very much valued her opinion and friendship basically try to hurt me, humiliate me, take away an opportunity that I LOVED to have and then justify it by lying about me to mutual friends and complete strangers. I didn’t really think this could happen after middle school, but alas, it does. It isn’t an easy thing to get through. Not only did I have to mourn the loss of opportunity and friendship, I had NO idea what triggered such a negative reaction. I also lost many friends in the crossfire as they didn’t know who or what to believe. That definitely affected me. It wasn’t fun or easy to work through. BELIEVE me; it took a ton of time to work through it.

I was angry, sad and mortified. My trust was completely broken and I started to question my own judgment. I wracked my brain to understand what I did to deserve such a transgression. And then I had it! I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t wrong. I didn’t deserve it. I had something horrible happen to me at the hand of someone I trusted and cared about and I have to live with it, but I wasn’t the issue. Oftentimes, people (me included) think they do good things to get good outcomes and bad things to get bad outcomes. When something horrible out of the blue happens, I tend to blame myself and try and find reason as to why that happened. Sometimes, people are just terrible – it isn’t my or your fault. Now, I’m not saying to NEVER accept blame for a bad outcome, but sometimes, it really isn’t YOU. It’s THEM.

After the fact, I tried to find the silver linings. I was able to devote more time to my boyfriend, friendships, work, etc. I was able to come to terms with my entire lifestyle change to be healthy and fit and that I was, in fact, doing that for me! I wasn’t doing it to appease said friend or anyone else. I was able to THINK. I had been running myself ragged with these people, FOR these people, who clearly didn’t care for me. It’s nice to be able to devote my time, effort and energy to things that matter and to people that cared.

After coming to that realization, I realized that I needed a re-charge, reset, refresh. I needed to come up with new goals to get that opportunity back that was taken from me. I needed to think outside the box. I needed to come up with a plan to reach those goals and stick with it. FOR ME. No one else. Picking yourself up after something horrible isn’t easy. And my life hasn’t gotten any less difficult; I still have the issues above – BUT being able to work through them, come up with positive ways to cope and positive ways to move forward has been my saving grace. I also can say that I didn’t do it alone. By reaching out when I knew I needed some help and having people reach out to me to give support, I was able to work through things much more quickly. I’ll be honest – I felt very alone, but having people just say, “hey, what happened to you sucked and I hope you are doing ok” really made the difference for me! Having a support system really helps and I’m glad to have built lasting relationships with people who are there to help pick me up. Yes, I picked myself up, but I had help to continue standing.