WHAT YOU PUT UP WITH

I felt like an afterthought.

It was a friendship that I had invested in, and I thought that they invested in it, too.  But I began to feel like an afterthought... always put off, never honest with. In the beginning, I excused it. They were busy and they had other things to do.  I could understand that.  But, as time went on and it just got worse, it became more and more of a thing. It became more and more something that I couldn't ignore.

And while this could very well go on to be something about how I felt mistreated and how wrong they were to treat me that way... it's not what I want to say.  I had a part in this, too.

When you notice that people are treating you in a way that you don't want to be treated, I feel like you have three choices.

1. You can ignore it.
2. You can talk to them about it.
3. You can walk away from it.

Much of the time, I feel like we do #1. We don't want to confront anyone, we just hope that it will magically work itself out.  But, the problem with that is that the way they're treating you isn't actually bothering them. So why would it change? Why would they change?  So, if we choose #1 all the time, it will go on bothering us. And in the end, the habit of it will be something that is partly on our shoulders. We perpetuate it by accepting it.

We can also do #2.  We can talk to them about it. Hopefully, that will help things to change. Maybe they don't even realize that they're treating you in a way that you don't like, that makes you feel less-than. Talking to them can bring that into their awareness.  From there, it's their choice whether you mean enough to them to change the way they behave towards you or whether you don't. The best scenario is that they do value you enough... and they try to change, and you can have healing between the two of you.

But sometimes they don't choose that way... and you're back to another choice.

1. You can ignore it.
2. You can walk away from it.

From here, you have to decide...  If the status quo is going to keep on being the status quo, can you accept that? Can you be friends with nothing changing?  Maybe you can.  Or maybe you can't.  But, you get to choose. You get to choose what you put up with and what you don't.

They say that what you put up with is what you end up with. What are you putting up with? What are you ending up with? And are you pleased with it?