This morning, while making my long overdue RSS rounds (definitely not as much time to read as I used to), I came upon this text by The Girl Who wherein she talks about being intimidated by assholes and caring too much about what these people think when they obviously do not give a shit about how they make her, or anyone around them, feel and how she is starting to find a way to assert herself instead of letting it consume her or affect her relationships with people she cares about. Essentially, she writes about overcoming her “pussiness”.
And wow, she was so able to articulate how I feel about the whole thing and why it is that at one point in my life, I decided I was not going to take any more abuse. Of course, you have to substitute “Mormonism” with “disablism” in my case. And a lot of the stuff I had to (and still have to) deal with is directly related to my disability and not always just random stupidity. But it does wear one’s patience thin in other areas as well and I think she explained it beautifully.
Still, coming up onto 41 years (eek!), I have to admit that stuff still gets to me and I still have moments when I lose all my bravery and just want to run away (and there are probably times when I should have). There are still times when, even though I know it is not all that important, that I should not let these people and these situations get me down, they do anyway. But that’s life and I guess that even when we know we are stronger than that, there are moments when we are not and we need to tell ourselves that is OK too.