Done With Toxic People

                 Never be bullied into silence.  Never allow yourself to be made a victim. 
                             Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. 
                                                                        ~Harvey Fierstein

The only person in this world that you have 100% control over is yourself. How you react to life, to people, to upsets and happiness is completely dependent on you.  Granted your reactions to things that life hurls at you is typically based on your experiences, your past, your inner strengths and weaknesses, however sometimes in life you need to delve past the typical and reach a part of you that remains unexplored.

We all have scars, some visible, most are not. You cannot go through life without getting them. Once they are healed, they are your battle wounds. They symbolize some life lesson, some part of your life that hurt you, but you fought back. Once that scar has healed it is a reminder that even when you aren't feeling particularly strong or feel like fighting, you have before and you can again.  To go through life without getting scarred at some point, is not to have lived. How can you truly appreciate the good, without having triumphed over the bad?

There are times in life when silence is called for, taking the high road and not allowing yourself to be pulled into someone's drama, until it comes to the point of you feeling like a victim. Never allow yourself to become victim to another's drama, another's toxic behavior.  Their issues are only your issues, if you allow it. Speak up, do not allow yourself to be bullied into silence in order to keep the "peace" or avoid causing ripples. By doing so you place yourself into the victim role and that is no place to live.  Never allow  yourself to become the victim, take control of yourself, your reactions, and define the role that you want to take.

Over the course of our lives, we will be faced with Toxic People.  Its inevitable. It sometimes is easy to allow them in, allow their poison to affect us, at times it seems impossible to get away from them. The hard ones are the ones we are related to, married to, work for. It is in these relationships that the cycle of unhappiness, fear and often self loathing continues round and round like a merry go round you can't get off. Round and round you go, never realizing that there is so much more out there. That you deserve people who respect you and love you.  Toxic people are incapable of seeing anything or anyone but themselves. They build themselves up by tearing you down. Some feel trapped, their self confidence eroded over the years, their self esteem so damaged that they have no idea what it is like to feel like they can take on the world.  They become the victim of their very own life. By allowing another control over you, how you think, feel or view the world, you are denying the very thing this world needs most, you.