Womanning up

These past few days have been a little revelatory*.  It seems my "This Is A Bad Idea" alert has malfunctioned.

I wonder at my unthinking capacity to be used. A couple of incidents over the last few weeks have made me wonder if I am such a people-pleaser that I don't even notice when I am being ill-treated until the damage is felt. And even then, the discomfort only surfaces hours or even days later. It's almost as if I go into shock.

I don't really know why I don't care for myself as well as I should. I believe I do value myself -- removing myself from a situation that was extinguishing me is an indicator -- and yet, I find myself doing things just to please someone I barely know. Or rather, so that they would, god help me, like me.

So, I am saying to myself, "What are you? A child? Woman up for fuck's sake!" This is a perpetual tussle within me. But I have a new frame. She comes in size 12 shoes, and wants only for me to be with her, to be present for her. I am her world and right now, who and what I am, she sees and learns from. If I don't love myself, and show her that I do, only bad things can ensue. Sure, she'll learn from them, but I'd rather she have a role model that she can be proud of.

And I'd rather be a role model I'd be proud of too.

*Then again, since I left my old life, every other day seems to throw up something new about myself. It's like I had been shattered into millions of little pieces, then scattered all over the place. Each day, as I journey, I uncover a different piece, so shaped by its environs that it no longer fits into its old spot. So I have to study it anew, and make a new place for it within the new me.