What relationships have a negative impact on you?

Ha ha!!! I made it to 2023, and I can’t believe it!

But seriously. Have we seen the prompt that WordPress has for us today?

(In case you were wondering, it’s up there.)

I grew up in a special sort of mindset. I thought that people were treating me bad. I had the mindset that I was being victimized. Picked on. Abused by others. I had no sense of humor and didn’t know how to laugh at myself, and for a long time nobody took the time to point out the obvious to me. This snowballed as I reached adulthood, and without essential guidance I floundered as I attempted to fix the avalanche of problems that threatened to crash down on me.

My one and only time I got in big “T” trouble with the law, I realized I was doing it wrong. In retrospect, it wasn’t such a big deal and yet in retrospect, I get why the law is such a big deal. I was out and about with my friends. We had driven to the superstore. At least one of them was shoplifting, as usual. I was not. But we did have things in common, and when we arrived back at my car and the police were there to greet us (no thanks to those sticky fingers,) it was not long before they found what we had in common in the backseat of my car. It was 1997 and I was thinking earlier how that was nearly 30 years ago, and it was so formative.

That’s when I realized I couldn’t trust the friends I ran with, and that I was making poor choices with my life. Of course, I had to clean up one mess at a time. The path I was on was fraught with misunderstandings, and it took years to get those straightened out. But I did that and ultimately, I realized that I needed a change of venue to truly thrive.

I see this a lot in the people I deal with now on a daily basis at my job, many of whom I have seen off and on for years. As a correctional officer I’ve seen so many characters come back into custody time and time again, and so often they tell me they’re going to get their act together. They’re never coming back because jail sucks. And so many of them come back because they don’t realize that part of their issue is the company they keep, and that when they run with wolves, they’re putting themselves in the middle of a bloodthirsty pack of animals who are primarily concerned about themselves. Everybody else is going to run you down to stay on top.

Ofttimes, I tell them it’s one good decision at a time. Pick their friends wisely. Et cetera, et cetera.

Some people will bring you down. Some do it on purpose, and some don’t realize they’re doing it but those who do are all doing it for one reason: they want to step on you to get closer to the top. Those people are the ones we need to cut loose, one way or another. Family or friends. Coworkers. Neighbors. Rivals. Public figures. We can’t not be social in this world, but we don’t need to let these human predators harsh our vibe. Let’s find ways to keep them at arm’s length — if not cut them out of our lives altogether — while we cultivate relationships with those who challenge us and lift us up in the knowledge that we can be better.

We should be better.

Happy New Year, my friends. Here’s to hoping I can post every day in January, because I did the crazy thing and joined Bloganuary.

Don’t hurt yourself trying to say “Bloganuary”.