A Good Word

I am a word person. Love to write. Love how words look. Love how they feel on the tongue. Love to make up new words. Love repeating childish words from days gone by. Words have power. Not the kind of power to rule the world. The kind of power that changes a life. Changes a day.
Words let an ordinary being do extraordinary things.
As I have mentioned before, I suffer from not feeling acceptable. I listen to a lot of inaccurate talk and try to change, mold, morph into being what is desired. It's not effective. As a matter of fact, it is detrimental. If I carve off parts of who I am, eventually I am nobody. I am gone from my own life. To be present in my own life, I have to be the uniquely crafted, gifted, one of a kind person that I was made to be. I am learning, but I still have a lot of growing up to do. I internalize that talk from others. I believe it even though I know it's bull****. I KNOW it. I know what is true, I am a grown up. Yet, I believe the untruths spoken of me. I believe the worst things that people think of me. That I'm lazy. Or unattractive. Or fat. Or selfish. Or mean. Or unproductive. Or a spendthrift. I don't just believe it, I suck it deep down inside and start trying to pretend that I'm the other thing.......you know, the good thing. I try to be whatever it is that will warrant love and acceptance.
I know it doesn't work. You know it too. But we all do it. Because we all want to be loved. But love that comes from having to fake it is not love at all. It's maybe commitment. Maybe it's convenience. Maybe it's fear of being alone. But true, real, genuine, fulfilling love is the kind that hears and sees and knows exactly who and what you are and doesn't flinch. It doesn't want the person to change in order to keep loving. It just keeps on walking beside. Through the mistakes, the joys, the successes, the pains, the excesses, the beauty and the beast. It sees. It hears. Deeper than the performing, the who of the person is revealed. It's rare. Unusual. Like fibndibg a perfect shell on a crowded beach.
But usually, that's not how life is. We are bombarded from every situation about how we should be, look, smell, feel, work, rest, spend, save, play........everything. And we buy into it. We try so hard. Scaling the nearly smooth wall. Trying to hold on. Losing our grip. Not able to be who we aren't.
But then, in the midst, we hear the good word. The word that says, "I like who you are." "I'm glad to be your friend." "You are worth it." And just a little bit of good can dispel the bad talk. The pain. Not fake good words. Not insincere good words. Real words. From a real person. Who really does care. I can't tell you how to get those words, but I can encourage you to be a giver of those words. Tell the friends in your life that they are valuable and why. Tell them how you feel. You just don't know, you might save their life. I don't mean suicide, though that is prevalent. I mean that you might save them from losing the life that they are supposed to live by pretending to be someone or something they are not.
It happened for me today. I was down for the count. Listening, internalizing, digesting and regurgitating the bad talk. Had it on loop play in my brain. It was all bedded down in my heart. And then the good word, "don't listen to that talk. you are loved for who you are."
And you know what? The whole day became different. I worked and visited and was folding a load of laundry when I realized.........a good word changed my life. It gave me back my life.
I love the power of words.
Be a good word.
blessings,
rhonda