MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
A PLACE HOLDER<\/p>\n
A young member of my extended family told me he was vaccinated
against Covid but he was dating a woman who wasn\u2019t and she was using a fake\u00a0card at restaurants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a sign of bad character,\u201d I said. \u201cShe\u2019s putting\u00a0other people at risk because she feels like having dinner out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a choice,\u201d he countered.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really,\u201d I said. \u201cThis virus is airborne and she\u2019s not\u00a0giving other people a choice because she\u2019s lying and you\u2019re enabling her. She
could infect someone and your silence means you’re doing it, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t really bother me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I don’t want to be alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
He knows I have strong feelings about the vaccination issue\u00a0and he must have told me because he felt guilty. But that isn\u2019t what this blog
is about. It\u2019s about settling for someone, overlooking blaring inconsistencies\u00a0and disrespectful behavior so you don’t have to be alone. It’s about using\u00a0someone as a place holder instead of waiting to find a partner whose values you\u00a0share and admire. It\u2019s about being with someone whose behavior is questionable\u00a0but you turn a blind eye so the person facing you is not yourself.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m trying not to judge my relative. In my past, I put up\u00a0with things I didn’t condone because being lonely scared the crap out of me. I
was afraid of sleeping alone, spending weekends alone, having no one to listen\u00a0to me and sitting alone at the dinner table \u00a0In order to avoid it, I didn\u2019t end a relationship until a new guy was waiting in the wings. Once he took the place of the last one, I tolerated intolerable behavior and didn’t speak up so I wouldn’t be left alone in my own company. It worked for a while, but like most things we dread, they happen when we\u2019re not looking. I\u2019d split up with a boyfriend of three years, ready to be with the new guy, when he backed down and disappeared. And then I was alone. There was no one to lean on, no one to go the movies with (it was way before Covid) and no one to cry to. I decided I had two choices. I could find someone I didn’t really like, that wasn\u2019t so hard to do, or I could make friends with myself, someone I had mixed feelings about.<\/p>\n
Why is it so hard to accept and forgive ourselves? Why do we
bully ourselves? I was beating myself up one day when I thought, \u201cIf someone\u00a0else were treating me this badly, I’d call the cops.\u201d That was the turning\u00a0point for me. I was tired of taking invisible blows and settling for place\u00a0holders so I started the long and challenging journey of making friends with\u00a0Andrea. When I was chiding myself for something, I imagined how my friend Rhoni\u00a0would treat me. Would she shame me and make me wrong or would she speak kindly\u00a0to me, find out what was bothering me and gentle me through it? Of course it\u00a0was the latter, but it went much further than that. I realized that if I was\u00a0judging myself harshly, that was how I was judging everyone else.<\/p>\n
I came to understand that loneliness is not reserved for\u00a0people who live alone. You can be lonely in a crowded or in a committed
relationship if you abandon yourself. So I made some changes. I used my breath to\u00a0become aware of my thoughts and I learned to soothe myself. I decided that I\u00a0wasn\u2019t so bad. Just like anyone else, I deserved a second chance when I didn’t behave\u00a0exactly the way I wanted to.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had a few relationships since then that didn’t last for\u00a0a variety of reasons but I didn\u2019t allow anyone to judge or abuse me along the\u00a0way. And I didn’t do it to myself. I have no idea what\u2019s coming next but right\u00a0now, I know that whatever I do, I have someone to support and encourage me. Someone\u00a0to forgive and uplift me. Someone to help me make decisions, to do creative projects\u00a0and treat myself with compassion when the going gets rough. Someone who will
never leave. That someone is me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG A PLACE HOLDER A young member of my extended family told me he was vaccinatedagainst Covid but he was dating a woman who wasn\u2019t and she was using a fake\u00a0card at restaurants. \u201cThat\u2019s a sign of bad character,\u201d I said. \u201cShe\u2019s putting\u00a0other people at risk because she feels like having dinner out.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}