There is only so much one can take.
In the face of a slight or a reproach, we can smile, and choose to rise above.
Focusing on the work at hand, we do our best to make the best out of an increasingly incompatible situation.
We exercise grace, self-mastery, and kindness.
We breathe, reflect, and intentionally empathize.
We attempt to walk in a stranger’s path, while wearing that stranger’s shoes.
Trusting in the clarity that comes with time; on how best to respond, and how best to react.
Many of us give until we have nothing left to offer. We stretch ourselves thin in trying to accommodate, while hoping for acknowledgement. We bring forth ideas, helping where we can, searching for any small act of reciprocity as a token of recognition. Feeling hopeful in a hopeless situation, allowing the disillusionment to dry out our bones.
In life, we learn that there is a time to wait and a time to act.
There is always choice.
Though the choice to act is often buried under the guise of self-sacrifice, obligation, and misplaced duty.
As if there were a right time to make the right choice for yourself.
For the sake of timing, we offload our own responsibility to make a call. Biding for time, delaying the actions we know the situation is calling for… weighing out the discomfort and inconvenience of what is known, with the discomfort and inconvenience that ties itself to uncertainty.
Though there is one guiding truth that flips the switch.
The knowledge that there is only so much we are willing to give, there is only so much we are willing to take.
Life tries to impart the wisdom that an expression of self-worth, is establishing clearly defined boundaries on when people lose the opportunity to gain access to you. Life will teach you, to teach others, that those who make the conscious choice to repeatedly hurt you, should never get to keep you.
There are people that we may come across on our journey, who will try to restrict our options.
They will make every effort to create the perception that the only rational choice you can make, is the circumstance that you are in.
All the while, they allow themselves to assume that the only rational choice you could possibly make, is in choosing them.
For their well-being, as well as your own, show them that they are mistaken.
To anyone who predicts that you will submit and acquiesce, allowing them to extract value from you, while devaluing you— bring them down to earth.
Give them a reality check.
That they are being short-sighted in seeing your choices from their point of view, and not from the hell that you’ve been through.
That in the end, you will always choose what’s best for your physical, mental, and emotional you.
And to anyone who feels blindsided by your choice to choose yourself, to walk away from a toxic situation, will soon understand that no matter the odds… that choice will always be simple to make.
In valuing self, there is a truth that rings clear - there is only so much one should take.
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