Whatever You Are Not Changing, You Are Choosing
This was written by Laurie Buchanan and I have been thinking about it a lot lately. I have been thinking about how it has applied to my life when I thought I had no choices, or at the very least no viable choices. It was a hard realization that I was playing the role of the victim when it was so obvious that it was ALL my partners fault!!!
I was living with a guy who relapsed into IV drug addiction the weekend before I was supposed to move in with him. He promised me that he would never use drugs again and I moved in with him. Truthfully I didn’t really have a choice my sister was moving into my place and if I didn’t move that would totally screw her over and I was a single mom on welfare. So, I moved in with him.
The addiction didn’t stop, it just kept getting worse and worse. He maxed out my credit cards. I was always robbing Peter to pay Paul. What choice did I have? I couldn’t move out I had no where to go. While there was a shelter for abused women, there were no shelters for women in my position. What choice did I have?
It was super easy to look at the drug addict, who was spending all our money, pawning all our stuff and say it was all his fault, but the reality was I wasn’t doing anything to own my part in all of it. I wasn’t changing and therefore I was choosing to stay in my shit hole of a life. THAT was a harsh realization.
Did I have somewhere I could have gone – nope… welfare told me my life wasn’t so bad and they weren’t prepare to help me. My family couldn’t take me in (nor was it their job to), I was $10,000 in credit card debt so what was I to do? I could have changed how I felt about things, how I reacted to things and explore how my choices were impacting my life. Not making a change was a choice – it just took me a while to understand that!
