Walking a mile in someone else's shoe

 

So, sometimes we experience something to learn what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

I’m not at liberty yet to say the particular situation going on with me.  I will say it involved frowning at the wrong time. Which, is super ironic if you know me because I almost always have a smile. Rarely do I actually use facial muscles in a downward motion. What triggered the response was so stupid, and I’m not sure why my emotions ran so high. I will say it’s making me evaluate how much I let the influencers I follow influence me. I don’t think you recognize it until it slaps you in the face. The good side is you have the opportunity to introspect and figure out what upset you and why (if you are self aware.)

It sucks to feel like you’ve been wrongly judged and accused. Judged before you’ve ever had a conversation with someone. Labeled falsely.  But even as I was thinking about the situation from the get go, I was thinking about my African American brothers and sisters, who experience or think they experience such judgements and accusations all the time.

We’ve become a highly racialized charged society.  Back in 2000, the population felt race relations were in a good place. Fast forward to 2024, and the world has been filled with hate. Unnecessarily.

Thanks to influences like CRT. It’s not that it sounds bad initially, but it permeates your way of looking and thinking about the world in a very unhealthy way.

But there’s little healthy dialogue about it either way, people accuse instead of listen. That goes both ways, left and right.

I don’t know. Its very hard to have a dialogue when you feel defensive or up in arms.

In the Perspectives class I'm sitting in on, we were exploring Jesus’ response to being falsely accused before Pilate before He was crucified. It’s interesting to think, He was silent.

Jesus was perfect. He’d done nothing wrong. How did He have the self control to just listen to the religious leaders vilify him?

Sometimes, many times, it’s better to just bite your tongue. Your silence reveals your innocence.

But that can be really, really hard. If you don’t have self awareness and self confidence, you’re sunk.

I keep rehearsing what happened in my mind. Nothing was said directly, but everything wrong was communicated clearly.

Why do I wear my emotions on my skin, and let stupid things bother me?  Things that others perceive as innocent, I get all bent out shape about internally. But I don’t know where to go with my emotions. Which brings me to the next subject of the night, boundaries and trauma dumping.

First of all, I don’t have a good track record with boundaries.

But, as I was writing, I was better able to see, where things have gone wrong in the past, and what’s my responsibility, so I don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over. That sounds terrible, to never keep a friend. Anyhow, when I recognized how unhealthy my trauma dumping was, I was convicted, and need to apologize to that friend asap, and find a counselor who can handle all my stuff. Because I have a lot of unprocessed stuff.

I have a lot of anger, and anxiety. Something tells me that’s a diagnosis I share with a lot of the population, but I can’t control anyone else. My responsibility isn’t to take on the world’s junk, it’s to take ownership of me. Good bad and ugly.

I think the frustrating thing about my anger is, I feel it’s out of my control. I know that thinking won’t help me gain control. But, it’s just like, the more I’ve tried to improve it over the years, the worse it’s gotten. I explode on my mom, I got so upset with a neighbor I was biting my tongue to not yell, I don’t know. I’m supposed to be held by the Prince of Peace, but that department can be lacking.

Then I struggle with self-condemnation and guilt, and a spirit of offense. It just goes from bad to worse.

And anxiety? I don’t necessarily show it, but, read my poems and you’ll be like whoa. This girl needs something else on her mind.

I do tend to see things as black and white. All or nothing. No wiggle room, no in between. Either you’re in or you’re out.

But that’s not how life is, and that’s not how most people operate.

I don’t know.  I haven’t slept much lately.