December has proven an interesting and challenging month. From it, I am blessed to carry into the new year three life lessons.

First. Trust only my gut instinct. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can trump what my primary instinctual response has been to any situation presented. Beyond dreams, which often provide only a glimpse of half a truth or a warning rather than a foretelling, my gut instinct has not once. Not ever. Misled me. If anything, I have always misled her by denying her.

Never again.

Second. This lesson’s been coming for years but I have only just heard her. I have this week begun and will continue to dismiss from my life folks who are unkind, disrespectful, not well-intentioned and who have had neither the class nor the self-awareness to apologize and own their shit. Truth told, this week has been refreshing for a girl who has always worked so hard to make the assholes comfortable, at the expense of her own prolonged pain.

I have always done my best to let things go, to be nice to everyone because everyone has their baggage and pain and I need to make room for it if I am to call myself a good person (pretty sure I just heard Heaven sigh); I have swallowed unkind treatment whole. To my own detriment, I have behaved in a way that has only benefited every fe/male asshole who does not deserve this generosity of my rising above. I have actively been sending the message: “Hey Not Nice Person! Keep being a Not Nice Person! No complaints or repercussions from me! LOL! Let me give you all of the girth in the world for you to keep being a Not Nice Person! Hell, let me even apologize to you for your f/cked up weirdo behaviour! Seriously! I’ll even put it in writing! XOXOXO”

Jesus. Seeing it laid out like that is almost as crushing as that time I took a vase as Christmas gift to my 6th grade teacher and walked it over so carefully through the snow and over the ice without slipping until, as I was turning the doorknob to her classroom, I dropped the vase and it smashed into a dozen little pieces.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not suddenly advocating lowering my own sense of standards and treating people as they have treated me – I don’t have the time and I am vindictive enough to leave matters within God’s hands as His imaginative response to assholes has already proven far more creative than anything I might drum up in my little head. Instead, I am advocating letting people go without drama. Simply just getting up and walking away or, if you’d prefer a more fun visual – pushing them off the bus while it speeds on. It has felt empowering, which is a word I have not used this past year.

Additionally, and as a small aside – this behaviour of mine (making myself uncomfortable so that assholes are not) extends beyond the assholes and goes into the realm of friendships with loved ones, and family. This too is a behaviour I will now be changing; the only comfort levels important will be my own. People who are not going to respect this will not find a place in my life. Simple as that.

Third. I will expect and ask for more. Clear as day, this one.

Happy New Year.
Yay.