How do they make you feel?

I was recently challenged to ask myself, without judgment, how people make me feel. How do I feel when I'm with this person? How do I feel after leaving this person? How do I feel about myself after an interaction? These appear to be the kind of questions you'd naturally think about and then make decisions accordingly. Yet historically I really haven't considered these things all that much. I've remained friends with people that have cut me down to my face. I've stayed in relationships where I felt demeaned and belittled for begging for their crumbs of attention. I've continued communicating with people who clearly didn't think all that much of me. 

So the core question then becomes why don't I walk away when someone makes me feel like shit? An easy answer is I fear confrontation, and though this is true, it's still only a surface answer. The painful truth is I believed them. I didn't question if they were wrong, if their opinion mattered, or if it was even damaging me. Now if a stranger walked up to me and said, "I can tell by looking at you that you have no talent." I could likely blow it off. Sort of. Eventually. I believed these people because I thought they cared about me, loved me and wanted the best for me. So a side jab, a rude comment, or worse yet laughing at me, would send me into a tailspin. 

I think of all the cute little quotes out there telling us what to do. "Believe in yourself!" "Love yourself!" "Accept who you are!". Adorable. I wish with everything in me that I had some unshakeable belief in myself that no words could touch me. Words mean a lot to me, they are important, and I tend to remember them all. My mother used to say, "You remember every bad word ever said to you!". This wasn't being said as an understanding but more as annoyance since I can recite back anything that hurt me down to the time of day, what I was wearing, and all the subtle nuances of a moment. Words don't roll off my back. 

Do I remember the good things that are said? Barely. Sometimes but not without a lot of critique before I can believe they are true. I do have one statement that I've held tightly to since I was 17. I was in a creative writing class my senior year of high school. It was the only class I enjoyed at all. I'd written many pieces, and though the grades were good, my teacher didn't say much at all. Then one day we had to take a word and use it repeatedly to be funny. I used the word "mediocre" and wrote a long piece about how I loved the sound of the word and that I didn't think it's definition was appropriate for such a cool sounding word. It went on for awhile and when I finished I was reasonably pleased. When I got the paper back it had an A+ and a note "This is Letterman material". (For the young ones reading, David Letterman was a long time TV host and comedian.) I can still tear up when I think of those words.

So I'm truly looking at every person in my life; friends, family, coworkers, and all those in between, and asking "How does this person make me feel?". It's a painful process, but necessary as it seems I missed the boat on doing this from the start. It's about no longer pleading for acceptance. It's putting my thoughts and opinions above others. 

My mind screams, "But what if they are right!?". Fuck them. Maybe they are right, but my feelings still count.