If the only reason someone wants to be your friend is to dump all their problems on you, then run! They don’t love you. They don’t even like you. You are just a dumping ground for all their stinking garbage.
~Sandi
I thought I was just a nice person, that’s why people liked me. Everyone likes nice people, right? Nice people that allow them to use you. To keep you on standby. To cry on your shoulder and pour their guts out. To dump and run, leaving you with all their mess to clean up.
I’ve had lots of friends like that. I guess I just had that look about me, or a sign on my head that said, “Use me! Abuse me! I won’t fight back, because I’m nice!”
It all started with my mother. Wow! My own mother! But I loved her so much that I was blinded by her destructive narcissism because I was so busy trying to please her. To fix her. Being her little scapegoat. Her little performer. Her little shoulder to carry all her childhood scars and wounds. All her anger and disappointments. All her stinking trash.
Without going into a fifty-thousand-mile marathon, let’s just say she really did a number on me. She crushed my spirit before I could read, and continued ripping and tearing and jerking, and playing with my emotions to adulthood. Until finally, I said ENOUGH! Until I finally walked out of her life. For six long years. To pry her fingers loose from my life that I served her on a silver platter. Because she was my mother, and my mother would never, ever hurt me.
I wasn’t born with mental health issues. I was a happy, sweet-loving little girl. I remember that clearly. How I loved romping in the woods along trickling streams, swinging on the swing my dad hung on a tree limb, singing and chasing butterflies and playing with turtles, lizards and giant bullfrogs. I was a free spirit. The world was mine to explore, and to be swept away in all its glory and splendor.
But, after years of being dragged through the mud with people’s garbage strapped on my back, I started looking and smelling bad. My attitude changed. My thinking changed. My heart changed. I am no longer that free-spirited sweet little girl that I never had to try to be. I just was. But, today, I still struggle with my identity. Maybe because I’m older now. Maybe because I look in the mirror and only see my mother staring back at me. Maybe because I am my mother, after all.
Run! Run as fast as you can from the people who try to drag you down. Draw from your inner strength and scream, “ENOUGH”! Tell yourself you are good. You are sweet, loving and kind. Be yourself. Never give away your soul. For, if you do, you will die a slow, agonizing death.
My daily goal, from the moment I open my eyes in the morning till the time I close them at night, is to be free. To stop beating myself up for every wrong that I do and every word that I say. For the real me to break through the filthy, stinking garbage and prove to myself that my deceased mother, and all my once-upon-a-time fake friends were dead wrong about me. Because, I’m not the city dump. I’m a person. A real, live, human being that is still trying to break free.
Straight From the Heart 