It’s Not Me, It’s You

Yes, readers, you did read that correctly. You know my blog promotes becoming better versions of ourselves, and sometimes, that means knowing when to take accountability for the things we may not have done correctly. However, it also means knowing when to accept that you’re not going to be wrong every time. Sometimes you have to take a step back and say, “It’s not me, it’s you.” Let me explain.

What Happened?

I won’t go into the specifics because I’m still healing from it all, and I’m simply not ready yet. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready, but I know that this is weighing on my heart and could potentially help someone else, so I’m going to share what I can.

Last weekend, I went through a very traumatic experience where two people that I loved dearly lied to me, manipulated me, and hurt me in ways that I wouldn’t have ever imagined. I spent the weekend in tears trying to understand why this was happening to me, and I couldn’t come up with anything concrete. I just kept thinking, “It must have been something I did to make them not respect me. You don’t treat someone that you love and respect this way, so it must be something I did.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but at the very least, I thought I would get an apology once the dust had settled. Unfortunately, I received the exact opposite — one person flat out lied and said they never said what they said to me and the other person didn’t take any accountability for their role in how the situation escalated. This made me feel even worse and left me thinking that I was to blame since no one else took accountability.

The Aftermath

After being depressed all weekend and relying on my mom and Marlon to dig me out of the trenches (thank y’all again), I carried myself through work as best I could until I got to therapy. Once I was in my safe space, I let it all out and walked away with a new mentality. I. Did. Nothing. Wrong.

Someone else’s decision to lie to me is a reflection of their character and has no bearing on who I am as a person. Just because someone decided to manipulate me does not mean that I did something wrong that made them do this. It is a choice that they made, and the only thing I can do is make my own choice to shift the way I move forward. That’s exactly what I did.

After therapy, I thought about my next move, and I knew that meant that I had to put boundaries in place. For the first person that hurt me, I blocked her number in my phone and blocked her on all social media apps. She will never be able to contact me again unless I decide that she should be allowed to, and as of right now, I need to protect my peace as best I can.

For the second person, and this one was the hardest because I lost so much respect for him, I decided that he needed to be kept at arm’s length at all times. The way that I allowed him to unravel me and cause chaos in my life woke me up and helped me realize that certain people don’t deserve to stand beside me. That doesn’t mean they can’t be in my life, but they will never be able to get that close to me to harm me that way ever again.

Final Thoughts

Words cannot explain how grateful I am that I had my mother, husband, and therapist to get me through that turmoil. They listened to me vent, cry, scream, and quite literally fall apart. Then, they were there to help me pick myself up so that I could start heading on the path of healing. Finally, they helped me understand that while it is important to hold yourself accountable for your faults, you shouldn’t force yourself to find fault if you genuinely didn’t do anything wrong.

Let this be a lesson to all of you that you should always try to be aware of what you could’ve done wrong in a situation and that you should surround yourself with people who will tell you when you messed up and when you were right. I’m thankful that in my moment of doubt when I was weighed down by my negative thoughts, I had people in my corner who I trusted to tell me the truth, and they did.

“Never regret being a good person to the wrong people. Your behavior says everything about you and their behavior says enough about them.” — Unknown