My posts on social media tend to include a lot of pictures of travel, of paintings, or memes that I find ridiculous. I don't get all that personal on there because my life was so exposed when Bill died and I didn't like how it felt. Relative strangers would chime in on posts about him and I found myself feeling like I had to be careful how I worded everything just so that no one would misinterpret what I'd posted.
But of course, they did anyway.
Someone DM'd me that I 'seemed to be handling everything so well!' and I think she meant it as a compliment. I took it as anything but. And it dawned on me that my public appearance, admittedly by design, made it seem like I was a-ok after losing him and I was just cruising on to the next stage of life. I began to obsess about what people would think about me and a single comment could send me into a total tailspin.
But, here's the thing: so what?
After a particularly upsetting incident, I had a total meltdown. I launched into a crying jag over a comment and kept asking how the commenter could be so cruel. But then it hit me: Who cares? I was probably reading the comment wrong and spinning out over nothing, but let's say she really did mean to be cruel - so what? So what if she thought the worst of me? I can't control what anyone else thinks, nor would I want to. And what I realized was that anyone who wanted to know how I was doing was reaching out to me directly. They knew me enough to know I don't talk about my troubles easily, so my public face was only that.
The truth is we have no control over how others think and feel. Certainly we can do our best to not be deliberately cruel but that's about it. If anyone interprets our actions as harmful or insulting without reaching out to clear the air, is that someone we consider close? Why would we choose to perpetuate surface relationships that we find abrasive?
Family members can be problematic here. We can choose to no longer have a relationship with someone but that often causes more problems. What we can do, though, is set clear boundaries. There's always someone who wants to argue but we don't have to be the one to engage. One strategy is to repeat the criticism or goad back as a question. Another strategy is truly to just walk away. When we don't engage in an attack, it will end. It's sort of like a fire: without fuel, it burns itself out. I've found that the fire starters will burn themselves out eventually so understanding that their attack is about them and not about me really helps.
At some point, we should all decide what our peace of mind costs. I've found that there's no price to it. Maybe loss highlights that but if someone comes at me looking for an argument, cool - have at it. But the reaction they're looking for is probably best found in the mirror.
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