Weed Your Garden

The people we choose to be around have an impact on our well-being.
Surround yourself with selfish people and you will find yourself getting tired, feeling lonely and constantly giving without reciprocation. These folks only notice you when they want something from you or they want an audience. They've got nothing to give but superficial platitudes and often when they aren't focused on enough- they will create a situation just to get attention. They feel entitled. They use charisma and drama to make their life a stage you get stuck on if you get too close. They take. Leaving your garden full of a stubborn, thorny weed that consumes all the nutrients and pushes out the healthy plants.
There are false friends who seem vibrant but are actually there on an agenda to use you, to amuse themselves or manipulate you to their advantage. They listen to you for ammunition. You trust them and you bleed for it. They skip merrily along uncaring or even delighted by the drama and destruction. These folks are dangerous. I've learned you can recognize them when they boast of how they've screwed people over or how they "love their boyfriend because he's an asshole", and the love seeing the wreckage. These are the poison Ivy vines snaking through, looking healthy as they strangle other plants and smear their irritating oil all over others around them, contaminating relationships for their own advantage. Usually financial, but sometimes just because. These folks usually have sociopathic tendencies. They don't want the people around them healthy. They often talk about wanting to see the world burn or society fall, chaos lovers.
On the other hand:
In your garden seek out and nurture:
Authentic friends. People who reciprocate. People who demonstrate maturity.
Listen to what they say, how they say it, how they treat others. How they regard others. Do they regard others?
Do not excuse or dismiss toxic behaviors. They do not just affect that individual, if that person is close to you- it will impact you and those around you.
I've been quietly weeding my garden, ripping out the narcissists, self absorbed, enablers, toxic, false friends, and unhealthy. I'm not responsible for those folks and having them around detracts from the health that I and the people I care about and am connected to have.
I'm taking time to assess, to nurture that garden in my heart.
It is not my responsibility to help those folks, but it is mine to be the best me I can be and to nurture the healthiest relationships I can with those I feel are worth investing in- those who invest back.

I hope you tend your garden. Be careful what you let grow there.

Finding Balance Again

Balance, it takes constant work. Walking across a low wire, only a few feet off the ground, you still fall if you get distracted.
You can practice low elements like a low wire with minimal safety gear and logical spotting. Off balance? Step off and start over.
In my youth I spent a lot of time practicing skills on low and high elements. Two line bridges, Cat's cradles, giant ladders, high wires. 
High elements over ten feet up, sometimes over twenty or thirty feet things are different. We did not practice these skills to perform for audiences. We faced them as challenges to overcome trust issues, develop communication and listening skills, to problem solve, develop self esteem, confidence, and teamwork. We all came from broken places, sharp edged children who could cut you with words and who carried emotional wounds that colored our worlds stark.
We learned when you are working with a partner, keep reaching, keep trying to communicate and listen. Instead of taking affront that the anxious person cuts in verbally, understand and sooth. Instead of getting annoyed at the slow speaker, keep catching yourself when you interject. Apologize. Trust. Everyone shares the work. Everyone succeeds together.
We joked, "That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger." The time I shredded my arm catching a fiberglass cargo net, but not quite well enough. The heavy rope I was on pulled me back. Thanks, Physics. The cargo net kept a good chunk of my arm. Bandage on. I went back up.
The last three years, I've spent a lot of time and energy focusing on trying to be healthy in a partnership, trying to encourage my partners to choose to heal as well.
Not everyone wants to heal. Not everyone wants to be what you see they could be, if they were brave enough. Low hanging fruit, habits.
I own that I am working through issues of anxiety, esteem, and that in the two relationships I felt insecure. Why?
Internal? External?
Part of it was knowing my partners weren't interested in anything more than temporary. Sometimes, to feel more secure temporarily, I put that thought on the backburner and kept planning and working forward. The abusive behavior and gaslighting of the first. The second waiting until he was done to communicate issues that we could have addressed months before. We both failed to communicate as well as we should have from the start.
It hurt to realize we had been out of sync for a while. That part of the hurt was not doing the fun things couples do when they love each other, the laughing, flirting, surprise gifts, wanting pictures of each other. We had bypassed that for routine and gradually spent more time in our heads. Resentments build in such a place.
Trying to put pieces back together that were flawed from the start, the pieces seemed to fit better. Hurts were still there.  Feelings of under appreciation, different priorities.
I'm tired. I'm taking time to go back to friends and memories, to look at where old wounds still hide. To address them.
I can trust my friends with the ropes. I've learned that. Giving the ropes back to the people who inspire me, who encourage me.
In turn, there I am, taking the ropes sometimes for them. Because. Trust. Love. We achieve more, we can face daunting tasks easier when we do it together.