Sarah Nyhan

Is my job to manage everyone else’s perception of me? Is my job to make sure no one is ever unhappy with me?

Or is my job to take care of myself? And take responsibility for my happiness?

I am done saving the world. I am done trying to change anyone’s mind. 

People are going to think what they are going to think. My job is just to be me. 

People don’t love you because you are loveable.
People love you because they are loving.

That is such an important distinction. 

God doesn’t love you because you are loveable. Although you might be very loveable. But ultimately God loves you because God is loving. Love is what God does.

Same with people. You can keep tap-dancing away, but someone is never going to truly fully love you unless loving is who they are.

And people can’t consistently love you if they don’t even love themselves. If they refuse to do the work they need to do to heal from their shit.

I heard a quote the other day that said: “Don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from.” That is so on point! I make a god of another person when I outsource what I think of myself based on whether they approve of me or not. And at the end of the day there is no human qualified to judge me. 

In fact I am not even qualified to judge myself. It is my duty to love myself simply because God approves of me and loves me.

It’s insane to extrapolate that I think I am perfect. Not at all! This whole writing business I do is for the express purpose of sharing the lessons I learn along the way as I stumble all over my aim and intentions. 

But are only perfect people loveable? 

There’s an arrogance in that line of thinking. Of hating yourself. Of seeing yourself as somehow exempt from our very real human condition.

My job is to take care of myself. Love myself. And from the excess then I have to give to others. Freely. Happily. 

Then there isn’t manipulation and some agenda underneath interactions. When I am secure inside myself. When I am not relying on others to rescue me.

And for sure many people need rescuing. I spent years in that very valid state. But then times go by. And you just gotta play the cards you’re dealt. If no one came to save you. 

The anger is real. The sadness is real. The grief is real. The exhaustion is real. So why is talking about it a problem?

If I have been victimized then why do you insist that I say otherwise?

I think I get it now though. You remain a victim if you don’t get the help you need to do the work to heal. 

And the people who hurt you are probably not the ones who will help you. Even though the wound and pain would probably heal faster in some cases if so. 

But life as it is, unless you are young and cute enough, you probably are going to get stuck doing the repair job on yourself. 

Fair? Probably not.

But if you want to master what happened to you and go live a life where your identity contains more than what happened to you, then you just gotta decide at some point to do the work. 

To set the boundaries for yourself that they should have had. To take care of yourself the way they should have taken care of you. To validate your thoughts and feelings even though they didn’t well enough. To give yourself permission to enjoy something other than dogged service to others. To take responsibility for your happiness. To give yourself the life you will enjoy. 

Instead of waiting around for the rest of the world to step up and give it to you. 

Sucks. But what’s the alternative?

Virtue signaling. If it’s any help, I realized that a lot of the time people create a big show of giving to others as a means to assuage their own inner conflicts. It’s a way to say they did something without getting their hands too dirty. Without really getting involved.

This used to irritate the shit out of me when a religious group I met with would make a big deal about going to give to the “homeless” one day a year for less then twelve hours. It was insulting in my opinion. 

I could go into that for hours. But I don’t have the time. Just to say someone with less money than you isn’t a tourist attraction on your ego trip. Just because they have less resources than you doesn’t mean you have anymore Jesus than them. The gall and audacity, really.

But anyway, I digress. Just to say if you feel alone in your healing journey isn’t doesn’t mean other people who are getting attention are actually receiving the help they really need. In fact sometimes the crutches they are given hold them back from growing by sparing them the pain that would spur them on to fight for themselves.

I hate that I felt so unsupported for so long. But there is a certain confidence I am proud of that I stood on my own. 

And don’t read that as condemning others for doing what they thought they needed to do to survive. Aside from harming children in the process. 

But if we gotta do the work anyway and eventually then get me to it already. Tired of going around this same damn mountain. This same damn desert.

We go so long that we forget better is possible. That’s the blessing of the discontentment. It reminds us we’re not home yet. In ourselves or our environment. 

I get it – I’m tired too. But I’m more tired of my circumstances than I am tired of the fight to do the work.

It is so difficult to believe in yourself when others around you don’t. It’s so tempting to just go with the flow. But will I be happy?

One of my greatest fears is ending up a miserable resentful old lady. I grew up with two grandmothers like that. God rest their souls – they are deceased now. But in actuality they died long before their physical bodies went into the ground. 

I think they sacrificed their happiness for comfort, security, and stability. They made choices that kept them from doing the really tough work of dealing with the pains they experienced. 

And then they made everyone else pay for it. Day in and day out, sunrise to sunset, the rest of their lives. They stayed holed up in their homes and just festered. Toxic poison spewing regularly from their mouths.

People avoided them. 
People dreaded them.

I refuse to go out like that. Everything in my life has prepared me to meet that similar outcome. But I can’t live like that.

The quest of my life has been to somehow escape the world they created for me to follow exactly in their steps.

I don’t think I’ve done the best job. But I can certainly say I’ve tried. I have worked my ass off to find and create some other narrative beside the one I was given and completely expected to follow.

That’s my job. Fuck what anyone else thinks. Especially those not willing to do the work. 

If there is joy to be had, I am determined to find it. If there is real love and satisfaction and happiness to be experienced, I will not stop until I find it.

Everything and everyone else can kiss my big ass. 😆 Go be miserable without me. 😁 

And of course God bless you either way. No shame. No judgement. I get it, life is really hard sometimes. 

But I gotta fight to save what’s left of it for me.