A word, if you please. I am going to take you on a very personal journey. Thanks for coming along for the ride. My journey here at Cage has brought out the best of me. Parts of me I never knew existed. I have said and done things that I never would have done in any other parts of my life. It is great and wonderful, yet scary and emotional and fun and intoxicating all at the same time. The emotional roller coaster can at times be overwhelming, and the connections (yes, even just online at times) can be beyond description.
So recently a connection with someone brought about a lot of confusing and hard emotions for me. In fact, I am exhausted by them. Flat out exhausted and spent. From my perspective things were pretty flipping traumatic. However, I'm not quite so sure that is how they saw the interaction. In fact, I am CERTAIN it is not. I always seek to see the best in people, and I am trying to even see the best here. And that is what brought me to write this in the first place. Just because I see, and feel, and hurt, doesn't mean it is the complete truth of the situation. Do not mistake this for invalidating my feelings, not at all. I am thankful i have people in my life who have helped and are helping me to work through these feelings and the situation. What I am doing is giving the benefit of the doubt and validating the other person's perspective.
Why am i doing this, you might ask? Well, because he is a person too. *People before kink! (Repeat after me: People before Kink!) People before...anything. I want to honor him as a person.He has his own feelings and thoughts. And maybe the motives were exactly what i feel they were, but what if truly they were not?
You see, maybe he read the situation in a way that meant i was saying and doing exactly the opposite of what i meant or wanted. Truly this time that was 100% incorrect! Choose your words carefully, folks. What signals are you sending off, especially unintentionally? We are responsible for those things too.
It needs to be said that someone's rejection should not be an open invitation for you to try harder to prove your point. This works in most areas of life if we take time to listen to people, both what is being said AND unsaid. Had my words truly been heard, perhaps this blog post wouldn't even exist. Everything is a learning experience if we allow it to be. 😄 And maybe this blog will encourage YOU to look at things through a different perspective than your own. As the graphic above illustrates, we can look at the same situation yet see it the exact opposite.
Fellow Cage Member, I hope you read this. I hope you can see my heart in this. I truly wish you the best and that you find what you are looking for. There is no ill-will or anything bananas like that. I will still say hi. Even talk. I value you as a person. And i value the places in my life that you touched and things that I learned from you. I do not choose to ignore your existence (believe me, there are people who do just that, and it really sucks when that happens. I know!)
*I am choosing love, choosing to grow and sparkle brighter.
*I am thankful, too, that through this I have learned what a gift it is to have someone who will shoulder the burden for me when things get overwhelming. That he chose to help pick up pieces of the hot mess that I was that day. That I have chosen to walk with someone who releases me from that burden and guides me gently as we move on, gifting me with boundaries that are helpful for both my sanity and my safety.
*Thankful for patience and guidance when i desperately needed it from a beautiful friend. She has been an amazing help to me in this situation, as well as other moments along the way. She encourages me and assures me that most of these things are normal and I am not a complete whackadoodle.
*For the friend that pushed me to do the right thing, even though it was the hard thing. You were also the first to encounter my emotional hot mess express self that day, and you didn't take advantage of it in ANY way. THANK YOU! Your integrity means a great deal.
*I am thankful that today is a new day, a new perspective...
