No

No. I won’t make myself smaller to accommodate someone else’s desire to fill up a room with their arrogance, or dominate a relationship with their imagined power.

No. I won’t starve myself to conform to a ridiculously unattainable image of what my body “should” look like based upon unrealistic airbrushed models who don’t even look like that in real life.

No. I won’t run away from my emotions, I won’t stuff down my feelings because they’re inconvenient or uncomfortable for you. I have feelings and I’m allowed to feel them, and if you have a problem with that, it’s very possible that you have some repressed emotions that are begging to be freed from deep within your soul.

No. I won’t allow the criticism and expectations of others to dictate how I feel about myself, or what I will do to please you.

No. I won’t allow your harsh words, your sidelong glances, your heavy silences that say more than most sentences you’ve uttered aloud, to influence me to make decisions that are not my own.

No. I refuse to believe this is all there is. Illness, pain, suffering, loss. Death. There is more. So much more, although during times like this it’s sometimes hard to keep the faith.

No. You don’t know me. You think you do, but you don’t. And until you’ve spent a few dozen seasons with me, run alongside me for a few training cycles in rain, snow, sleet, hail, and humidity, you don't know me. Until you’ve watched me melt with grief, explode with rage, and jump for joy, you don’t know me. Until you've shared a home cooked meal with me at my pine wood kitchen table, until you know my favorite bedtime snack and what I like in my pancakes, you don't know me. Until you keep record of all of my littler ridiculous pet peeves in the recesses of your memory, next to my numerous, but hopefully endearing, idiosyncrasies…

You.

Don’t.

Know.

Me.

And unless you’ve done all of those things, you don’t get to judge me.

The thing is, people in my life who have lived life with me and know all my secrets and my many, many flaws intimately, they do not care to judge me. So unless you’re one of those select few to whom I’ve warily opened the gate of my heart, I don’t much care about what you think, or what you have to say about me.

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