Just Listen & Hear Me - Page 2
© Cynthia Webber (Jausten)
People view others by a standard that is created by society, and when we go against what their expectations of us are, they are lost and confused. If our fibromyalgia was visible, they might pity us and allow us to live our lives in the manner which we were capable of doing. But we don't want pity. We just want to be understood, heard, and accepted just as we are now.
Really listening to someone takes a lot of effort. It is not just my mother who can not understand or really listen to me. Most people are so wrapped up in their own hurts and losses that they can only talk about themselves and think that it will help another to view their life differently. Until people really stop talking and just sit and listen to our words and learn to feel what we are saying, they will never know us. My mother wrote that I've always risen above the hurt and darkness of my life. I am rising above my life with fibromyalgia by writing, and spending time on the Internet doing what I love to do, yet this is viewed as being wrong. I am suppose to continue to give to those who don't really understand what my days are like.
I know myself better than anyone else does, and I know what gives me the quality to my life that I need now. Whether others agree with me or not doesn't matter. But it is painful not to be accepted as I am by a family member. I don't know how to get my family to really listen and hear me, but I do know that by having strong boundaries around myself, I am protecting myself from their stabbing words.
We can never change another person, and why people continue to try to change us is a mystery to me.
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