Life as Amber knows it

I loathe bullshit.

And I’m not talking about the game Bullshit that my friend Dionne Lister and I play on our weekly podcast. I’m talking about full-blown bullshit, in any form. The quickest way to get me to stop reading your book? Bullshit your way through writing it and don’t do the work that your readers deserve and then publish it and waste my time and money. Bullshit me in my relationship with you? We’re going to have words.

I’ll excuse bad days, because we all have those. Hell, I’ll excuse bad weeks, and offer my help in any way I can if you need it. Make a rude comment to or about me, and I’ll tell you it bothers me.  But if I look at the arc of our relationship, and all I’ve done is given when all you’ve done is take? I’m going to walk away and not look back.

I can be the kindest person you will ever meet in your life. I will stand beside and behind you, I will help you pick up the pieces, I will be a soft place for you to land when your life has fallen apart and you need somewhere safe to relearn living. If you need help, and it is within my power to give it to you, I’m going to give it freely with a smile on my face and ask you what else I can do. I won’t ask you to change, ever, and I will demand the same respect from you.

I can also be a bitch on wheels.

There is too much in the world that is negative. There have been far too many negative experiences in my life, times where I’ve had to grit my teeth and hold on tight until my physical or emotional health has balanced out. When the shit has hit the fan, and I’ve been balanced on a knife’s blade width of sanity because everything familiar and known and secure has shattered. When all that has kept me sane is someone taking five minutes to say, “Hey, I know you’re hurting, I’m here” or someone taking the reins and shouldering some of the weight before it knocked me off the edge into a place I would not be able to return from.

When things are tumultuous in my life, I myself need a safe haven. I need the people in my life to just simply be there if I need them. I need your understanderstanding that while I do love you, and I am there for you, that if the shit has hit the fan and the bottom has dropped out, I have to take care of me first, before there is no more me left. Because I can only bend and stretch so far.

For the people in my life who I have given my unconditional love to, it is with the understanding that the love I give to them is a gift and is on loan. It is also with the understanding that when I give that love to someone, it also comes with two things: respect and honesty. And I expect those two things in return. Falling under the heading of respect is my right to walk away if all you bring to my life is hurt and heartache. If you constantly berate me with negative comments and I ask you to stop and you choose to continue doing so? Guess what? I’m done, and I’m walking away, and when I reach the “done” point? That’s it. I won’t be back. Under the heading of respect, also, is the fact that you don’t have to like every decision I make in my life. Feel free to hate it. I can guarantee that I won’t like every decision you make as well. You don’t have to like it, but you owe me the courtesy of respecting the fact that I am my own person, and when I make decisions and choices in my life, its not on a whim, its with a great deal of thought behind them.

And if you’re dumb enough to give me the ultimatum of “Eat my bullshit politely or I’ll walk out of your life”, guess what? I’m going to do you one last favor and save you the trouble, I’m going to walk away from you instead.

I am who I am for many reasons: Who I am at my core due to my personality, and who I am due to everything I have faced in my life. I refuse to change, unless it is a change that is going to be positive in my life, and only then will I make the change on my terms. Accept me as who I am scars, faults and flaws included, and embrace me as I do you: perfect and beautiful for all your scars faults and flaws.

Or live without me.

~Amber