The highest compliment I have ever been paid

You are wonderful.
You are brilliant.
You are strong.

You know your truth.
You know your experiences.
You know your own mind.

Yes, there are people who feel intimidated by you, but that's their problem. You raise the bar. You are making and doing. You are moving forward. You ask questions. You expect real answers.
Small, weak, and petty people are threatened by this. They are threatened by people who are making something of their life, instead of playing in elaborate dramas.
Reality is scary as hell. You acknowledge and embrace that while others create masks and lies to pretend it's something else.

You can look at your own scars and flaws with honest eyes, which makes you braver than most. You are real, not perfect, not a false pretense, and that adds to your beauty. You the mountains, not a statue. You are alive and changing, not fixed and calculated. No artifice, no imitations, no plaster facades, you will endure.

You are loved.
You are valued.
You are cherished.

Drama-Mongers

Drama is the unnecessary creation, prolongation, and/or spreading of conflict and strife.
Monger is a dealer in a specific commodity promoting something undesirable or discreditable.

 Drama-Mongers - people who deal in the unnecessary creation, prolongation, and/or spreading of conflict and strife.

This past year I have found myself surrounded by people like this.  People who delight in the pain others are feeling, perhaps an overdeveloped sense of schadenfreude.  I reserve the schadenfreude for people I actively dislike, or people I actively don't care about.  Drama-Mongers apply this to people they call friends.  Laughing with delight every time they find out someone is hurting.  They have looked me in the eye and asked again and again about dramas going on in the community.  It took a while to realize that they weren't asking to help people, to get involved, to make things better, because they cared about people who were hurting.  They only asked because they want to be the center of attention the center of their own private dramamills, to peddle their newfound knowledge to others. 

This is not to mistake them for people actively seeking to manipulate me.  There has been plenty of those.  From people stepping in between my ex-partner and I to forward their own agendas, to people using friendship of many years to get me to believe the lies they tell me even as they contradict themselves when they think I am not in the room. 

2012 Resolutions.

I have decided to look more carefully at the people I invite into my life for 2012. The following are no longer welcome. I deeply regret having allowed them into my life and am seeking to eliminate their presence as quickly and efficiently as possible.1 Victims: not those who have been the recipient of treatment intended to victimize them - instead those who consistently regard themselves as a victim. People who marinate purposefully in a cauldron of psychological dysfunction. Who whine about the world and complain incessantly about how "put-upon" others make them feel. Those who continually place the blame for their circumstances on everyone but themselves. Blame, excuses, and victimhood are toxic, divisive, and diversionary.

I am responsible for the things I have allowed to happen over the last year & how I chose to react to them. I have reflected extensively in writing as well as in silence seeking to determine what went wrong and when. I do not blame others for the things that I have experienced emotionally. I hold myself accountable for my emotions, my actions. I do hold others accountable for their actions. Analyzing and acknowledging their actions is not the same as refusing to forgive or holding a grudge, at the same time I feel no obligation to forget their past performances, nor to believe that they are not indicative of their future behaviors.

2 Cowards: They will lie to you, lie about you, speak in passive-aggressive diatribes. They seek to hurt and belittle, to do it all behind an anonymous or an obtuse shield as they are too weak to actually face people they wish to hurt. Their own self-determined weakness is not something that I desire to be near.

I allow too many people near me who flock to me to be their voice, to say the things that they are too afraid to voice. I cannot do this anymore. These same cowards are unable to face me directly when they take issue with something I say or do. Instead, this year, they chose to attack others near me or positions I hold. This is unacceptable, I will do my best to be more aware of their capacities and intents in the future.

the end of 2011

1 year ago I was being consistently emotionally manipulated by a man in my life.

Now, I am finally free of the drama and lies and manipulations. No longer beholden to his every tantrum.

1 year ago I trusted friends.

Now, I trust so very very few people.

1 year ago I accepted people into my life w/ little question.

Now, I question every encounter, "Do I really want this person in my life & how far & do I really care if their feelings are hurt when I draw the line for me instead of them.