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The ABC’s of being a POS: Intro
(Edited 08/09/2024)
Note: This upcoming series is for entertainment and educational purposes only. If you wish to learn more about mental health, abusive behaviors, and support, please talk to your primary physician’s office, or a licensed professional.
For emergencies, please call 911, or call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Life is full of a healthy balance of people that deserve hugs or suplexes.
Sometimes both.
There’s a long list of examples of these people in both the past and present, public or private figures, and all types of relationships.
No matter what, the world has its shares of people that deserve attention as much as the others need to be starved from it.
This is dedicated to the second half.
By now you’ve assumed that the POS in the title does NOT mean “point of sale.” It means the other thing.
The one that made you think of a person or people who could understand physical actions more than a sentence about their behavior.
And even though one word or phrase will sometimes be used for each letter, they are not limited to them.
Consider each one a gateway into others that, like the ones chosen here, are tied to each other, and will be mentioned and even repeated within most of them.
So, if you or someone you know is a POS, and you’re looking for how to increase your villain potential, you’ve come to the wrong place.
After all, what better way to talk about the tricks and tips in ways that match your actions towards your targets/marks?
No matter what, remember this quote as this journey begins:
“If it hurts you, it’s about you.”
-Kingston Priest
P.S. – It is understood that there are those with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed mental conditions which will have similar behaviors mentioned here. This is in no way meant to offend them, or their related parties. This project is dedicated to those who choose to behave certain ways that deserve to be spoken about.
First: Animosity
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Unplugged
If you’re not careful, social media will have you chasing attention from the wrong energies. That’s true offline as well, but the internet can really have its way with disguising an audience’s true selves.
I think about that every time I’ve posted something on multiple platforms.
Well I try to.
Sometimes I get that inner joyful ping when someone I admire reacts to something I shared directly or to the masses. It’s fun and surprising who’s paying attention.
I have to pace myself and not give into the hunger for viewership. I’ve seen too many people make posts about breaks they need from social media alone, often because the offline world is screaming to come back to them, or regain a balance.
Somewhere in the years of doing what I’ve done online, I know I’ve done the same types of posts. You can only take so much of the alphanumeric magnetism before tapping out.
Just because something has become woven into our daily lives doesn’t mean it has to risk emotional fatigue. There are enough human factors that can do that on their own. Last thing we need is to become bound to the ever-changing algorithms that refuses to pick its programmer’s side.
I’m not saying give up all your accounts and tech. I’m the last person that should be saying that. But when you start feeling that pull to check that next post, or check if one of your many crushes uploaded something new, do what you can to fall back and put that energy back into yourself.
All of that can wait until you’ve recharged first. I’ll get into more of how I’ve been doing that in the next entry.
D.F. -
Breathe
(Note: This was originally written in August 2023. Enough of it is still relevant. Enough to even keep its original title.)
Even with everything that I have shared and have been able to process since this started, I’m still learning how to protect myself from emotional attacks based off past events. It’s hard to do when you share any space with people that can do that at any time they please.
Regardless if anyone is in the room with you or not, they may have mastered the ability to dig at you subtly or with enough strength to keep making your business theirs, and their ego priority.
They may want you too exhausted to fight, or to get the last word in. But that’s where they’re wrong. No matter how well they can get either one, it shouldn’t change your mind about who they are and what needs to be said about them.
What they do with that information, and what my sources will do about mine, will have to be left up to chance. And I know that time is coming soon.
I might even be the reason behind letting it leak. I’ll be sure to let it be known what the results are. Long time followers deserve that much, just as much as the new ones.
Until then, I just have to remember to breathe to regulate everything and anything that comes to mind that sets those moments off inside me. It’s saved me so far, but I can’t say for how long.
Then again, I didn’t get this far by doubting my ability to push through it. There was a time that I doubted this blog would go past a month, or a week at least. It’s served as a reminder to keep going, fighting, and breathing.
Many will support me, but no one can do it for me. That’s what I have to make sure I keep stepping forward. So much, that the last steps out of certain houses will stay that way for good.
D.F.
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Visionaries
Many of us look a way that fits someone’s broad or narrow scope of a particular area. You could be minding your business in public until you’re asked if you have history in something based on your appearance.
If you do, it’s up to you whether you want to reveal that or not. If you don’t have history with the place in question, you’re also allowed to roll your eyes from being stereotyped for the millionth time.
When you don’t fit someone’s idea of a demographic that you’re uncomfortable with, they can either quietly accept your claim, or try to insult you for not following their script.
“Big for nothing,” “wasted talent,” “but you’re so (insert physical trait),” or “you’re missing out.” These are just a handful ones I know of. And to some agree I’ve been told.
Anyone bold or miseducated enough to tell you things like this are part of a system you were meant to be against, either on a small or large scale. It doesn’t matter if they are a stranger or even someone close. You know who you are and what you want to be for yourself, and for anyone else willing to listen and follow you.
If they want you to be shamed for not sitting with the “cool kids,” let them live the life a dissatisfied critic towards other people’s goals.
Sometimes these are people who gave up on their own, and felt it was easier to drag others down with them. Especially if you’ve chosen to not have people live vicariously through you in places you don’t want to be in, and not meant to be in.
Stick to your inner vision. Surround yourself with people that support it. Anyone that’s the opposite of that can keep up or keep away. It’s your life to life, not theirs to control.
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Outlast
I’ve been doing a lot of research about what it means to be a scapegoat. I’ve know of the term for ages, but it means more when I finally applied it to myself.
For those new to the term, it’s sometimes labeled as the “black sheep (of the family),” often the whistleblower that calls out negative behaviors, either towards an individual or towards a group or more.
The scapegoat can even be the trauma and insecurity dump, often by people that, as I’ve talked about many times and in different ways before, refuse to be held accountable by their faults. It’s easier to bring your own troubles up to boost their twisted ego(s).
While it’s VERY easy to tag that on family structures, social ones count as well. At least they’re easier to remove from your life, if not greatly limit their exposure to you.
So what do you do with this knowledge? Well one thing is to not let it define who you know you’re not. These labels only signify what you are to others that will find new ways to devalue you, hoping that you buy into the lie that you’re less than your heightened self-worth.
You keep doing what is best for you in your time. Reading, writing, teaching your way out from the system that needs you near them. The more they try to pull or keep you in, the more damaged they’ll feel without you.
Not your problem.
Even if they still treat you like the black sheep when you’ve gained that distance, let them. There’s no changing someone’s mind about you when they’ve set it to believe that your tainted role in life is finalized.
You’re better than their emotional jabs. Their fake tears. Their demands to be the old you.
If you’re careful, by the time they learn who you’ve become, it’ll be too late for them to try any of that.
And even in your carefulness, take breaks, but never stop.
D.F.
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Risk
On my last post, I said that I could have been in any location aside from my current one without the knowledge I gained by being where I am now.
What I didn’t get into is how so much of my locations of interest were based on past romantic ties.
It didn’t matter if we were in a relationship or feeling like one was possible, I always felt the need to be closer to the person of interest. Yes there were ones that lived close that could have been a romantic link, but whether near or far, there’s been silent or vocal agreements that friendship/acquaintanceship was for the best.
Except for one. A person that I share current mutual love for, while still abiding by the social labels of being “single.” Even with that, living closer is a feat that would guarantee us becoming “official,” but much growth has always been needed as individuals before knowing if even that is meant to be.
And that’s what was missing from past interests; me not knowing what I wanted in and for myself, and instead driving towards what I felt was needed for us to thrive. I made choices like that in my last official relationship, and off of that alone I eventually learned to be better.
Besides, having a relationship with yourself is what’s needed for any kind of partnership to thrive. You may not need to feel complete, and you may be chosen while you’re restructuring yourself. But you can still know enough to know what is best for you, and the both of you.
Even if what’s best means not being together as more than friends, or even as that.
Wherever my next destination is, it will be in a conscious mind that’s not based on trauma bonded actions like they used to be. And if my person and I are meant to be together in shorter traveling distance, surely there will be celebration.
Nothing would mean more than to celebrate choosing myself first, and let life do what it does best: keep on surprising me the way my person did 🙂
D.F.
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Stay Home
(Edited 10/26/2023)
For a long time I have been hearing and being told to appreciate what I have now against being frustrated over what I don’t have yet.
Maybe there is angst about that because there’s always been sense of selfishness and control that’s desired from people that want me around for their needs. The same people that are quick to remind me of them after I tell them what I want for myself.
That’s what makes it hard to look at any spin on the “be grateful for what you have” line. I could easily tell myself that the benefit of being here has been to be fueled by inconsistency, trauma, and many secrets to finally speak about it in a style that would be common in this MH space, but unprecedented within many of my family ties.
And for the many reasons I am grateful that I’m not in another space to call my own that’s removed from these environments, sometimes I have wondered if I would have been in a space to have written any of what I had?
I don’t think so.
I would have been in any given location* operating under even remnants of the systems that I grew up with, and believed I was fond of. I would have done more harm to myself than good if I stayed in that place while maintaining a new one.
So without being where I am now physically, the one thing that I can remain grateful for is the chance to fulfill this mission that I may as well have been built for, or even called to begin. I want to believe that others throughout personal generations started it in their own ways.
Who would I be if I wasn’t accepting the call to continue what they began?
D.F.
*This will branch to another topic this Friday.
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Quick Words
If you want to show true love for someone, believe in the changes they want and need for themselves. Not in the changes and beliefs that benefit you.
It figures that after writing so much about this even last week or more, I would find a way to short-hand it 😌
Pardon the shortness of today’s post. I’ll be back to form later this week.
D.F
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Time Crisis
No matter what age you are, society will always have something telling you that it’s too late to get a certain thing started. School, better spending and eating habits, romance, so many other things.
Then you have the stories of people getting those degrees in the forties, starting a world famous podcast in their fifties, writing that book in their 60s, and so on.
Some of those stories are circumstantial as to why it happened that way, one common theme I’ve always seen is that some people paused or stopped chasing their dreams because they got in their own way.
Doing that can often be in the form of voices of doubters and critics who catch wind of so much as what you want to do for yourself, and even for others outside of them. It’s not far off from the type of people I discussed in my last entry.
Whether it’s because of distance by logistics, or the more grim reason of mortality, we owe it to ourselves to not let those stinging words do that much longer. It takes time to reprogram yourself from those habits, and when you do, it’s okay to grieve the time lost giving into them.
But however you can, let whatever energy remains get you ready to make up for that lost time.
Don’t rush it. Don’t Force it. The people truly on your side won’t do either of those on you.
Reclaim your time. Your future self will thank you.
D.F.
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Safeguard
Taking “no” for an answer is something I’ve become more passionate about since the last time I ever wrote about it. It’ll take time to find it, but once I do I’ll hyperlink it right here.
To not take someone’s “no” and risk guilting, bullying, or threatening them into a “yes” shows a great amount of disrespect towards you. Being questioned until their desired answer is gained is just as bad or worse.
If you’re like me, who ends up doing a thing and only then be told “I love you” afterwards, your definition of love is heavily redefined. One that does not mimic their habits onto others we would genuinely care for.
Also one that doesn’t respect their beliefs, if not them as a whole. No matter who they are.
These people also have a habit of getting revenge on you for defying their cries. Either directly, or with help from their loyalists. People who may even have their own reasons to be reluctant allies. That’s not your fight, though.
Stand your ground against all of them. Continue the cutoffs however you can. By all means, do not give into the words from others that openly take their side. They see you just as disrespectfully as the people they support always do.
Your respect for yourself matters more than any way they view you. Whether it’s felt in silence, distance, or both, never stop choosing yourself over anyone.
D.F.
Image Source: https://www.littleshaman.org/cbc15 -
Remember Me
The thing about having friends for a very long time is that you get to see each other in different phases.
There are those that grow together through life events, and those that grow apart, sometimes for the same reasons. And with both sides, they the chances that either completely sever ties, or downgrade the friendships to being acquaintances. That way there’s less expectations on how you show up for each other.
I have noticed these things even before starting my mental health journey. While never putting it into words, it was always there. One that I know was due to social and political differences that bled into personal matters. Another had to stay gone because they were just a shifty person.
And as I have started this personal inner growth journey, the ones that have quietly downgraded to an acquaintance surely have seen me doing this with no chance of stopping. Often in the form of photos and videos, often ones I make, that are tied to these topics.
Some of them I know are going through it themselves, making similar discoveries as I have about the inspirations of their old behaviors, and that’s great. At times a few of us have actually had conversations about our discoveries, often finding deep parallels.
That’s why I find myself continuing the journey. Some of us may have limited access to people that they can talk to outside of professionals, through shared experiences or what reminds them how they’ve never been alone. How I’ve never been alone either.
Even if we’ve grown apart or become closer throughout this time, I do my best to let them know that they are not only important to themselves, onut they’re important to me, too.
No matter how little or frequent our interactions are, know that I am rooting for any form of healing you’re going through. Don’t forget to cheer for yourself, above anyone else.
D.F
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