Feelings

Feelings

I don’t usually like talking about my feelings. I really don’t. I can do it in clinical terms, but really talking about how I’m feeling is, and has always been a hard thing for me.

But today, I need to.

I have been through a lot in my life, and talking recently about things that have gone on in the past, well it’s brought back a lot of feelings that I need to talk about.

When I was younger, hell, even to this day, but what I’m talking about is the past, I have been bullied. I have been told to just give up, give in and just ignore them because they’ll go away. My folks didn’t tell me this, they told me to fight back. But other authority figures did. The bullies – they never went away. They kept on until I finally was broken down, hurt and wounded (often physically). The advice was like throwing fuel on a fire.

I am at the point where all the damn bullies I have met with in my life can go take a long walk off a short pier. You didn’t make me stronger. I made myself stronger. I kept going. Because then I saw a light at the end of the tunnel.  I saw that I could get away from the area that cut me down, that through the actions of the people who lived there who bullied me, or turned a blind eye to it, I could get somewhere else.

Now, it’s not as easy to get away, but I am a writer, and guess what? There is an escape. I can write out the feelings that haunt me. I can deal with the bullies who made my life an unending hell in fiction.

I have learned to not ignore my gut feelings, that what is right for someone else isn’t always for me. Life is not one size fits all. Some of us have the luck to be playing this game on easy mode. Some of us don’t. Some of us who play on hard mode still make it through the game and still win.

But I will not, ever again, deny my feelings.

Until next time, be awesome to each other.