Home Truth's

Last night I was told some things about myself from somebody that I love. Things that were hard to hear. Things that I already knew. It's funny how you can hide your flaws from most people that circle your life but when you truly let someone in they become a mirror for the things you hate most about yourself. It can be very confronting when someone cares enough to call you on your shit and tell you to pull your head in but it can also be an eye opener to the issues in your life. So in an effort to be transparent I have decided to bare it all.

I judge people.
I judge the way people dress, I judge the way people talk, I judge the way people live their lives. I always say that I hate people who judge others but the truth is that I am so very bad at it and it really has to stop. It's funny how I can have compassion on the homeless and the sick and the poverty stricken but when it comes to every day people in my life I'm the first one to make a snide comment about an outfit or brand someone trash because their hair is just a bit too blonde. How can I say I love people when I write them off before they even speak a word. I am part of this worlds problems.

Some of the best people in my life are nothing like me at all, I can think of 3 of the closest people in my life who I wrote off as a dits, a nerd and a bogan. None of them are any of those things and if I hadn't of been in situations where I was forced to get to know them beyond first encounters I never would have gotten to know the hearts that were in them. I would have missed out.

I need to stop judging people, I need to shut my mouth and open my heart, I need to look at whats on the inside and not whats on the outside, I need to give people the chance that I hope they will give me. I need to change.

I am stubborn.
If I think I am right I will not back down, I will not say sorry, I will not hold out an olive branch. I will punish myself to prove a point, I will push people away if I think they are going to hurt me, I can be cold an aloof and unforgiving.

I promise you, dear reader (always wanted to say that), that I don't want to be that way. I have always had to fight in my life, I was told I would die before the age of one, then before the age of four, then when I was fourteen. Being a stubborn little sucker is what has kept me alive and is what has kept me fighting through a world of pain in my life. I beat heart disease, I beat depression, I beat an eating disorder, I beat becoming a statistic. I held on to my life and my sanity like a bulldog with a ball and I guess that has become so ingrained in me that I don't really know how to stop it. I let it run over into my every day life and I keep people at a distance and I hurt them and I hate myself for that.

Inside my heart breaks at the thought that I could be capable of hurting anyone or pushing anyone away but my exterior has become so hard and so well polished that it's hard for me to be vulnerable, to let someone else be right, to care just a little bit less and smile just a little bit more. My past is no excuse for my present. I have to let some things go and save my stubbornness for when it really matters because if I'm wasting all my time fighting about the small stuff then I will have no energy when I'm fighting the big stuff.

I don't know how I can change these things, except by being aware and praying for wisdom and actively trying to treat the people I encounter on a daily basis better. I'm a work in progress.

Smile often
Beth