2018 is in it's last 12 hours of life. In only ten more hours, the entire year will be but a memory. This was a hard year for me in some ways. It was a year of growth, and a year of personal loss. It was a successful year of business, and it was a year of closure on some difficult involvements with people that arose out of business.
I still, 18 months later, am working and fighting to return to the athletic, physically strong person I was before my hips developed osteoarthritis in my late 40's. Only replacing both hips ultimately offered relief, but the toll those ten years took on my body still shows in my weight, and my energy level, but I am better and better every month.
Not only did the extreme and relentless pain take a toll on my physical self, it was a constant struggle emotionally not to be impatient with those closest to me who didn't understand what I was going through. My husband, who has his own challenges, found it humorous to make sport of me more often than not, and that lead to an extreme stretching of my ability to trust him and feel safe with him, and even though I'm in a better place physically now, the emotional cost of that extreme, years-long, lack of empathy took such a deep toll that he and I are still experiencing the fall out of it.
I think when faced with such blatant pain; with no escape; and such a feeling of isolation from the people around us who are mobile and enjoying all the things we have had to give up, the experience of coming out of that place is so uplifting and so empowering and so freeing, that we realize there is no way we are willing to go back to that "other place," or frame of mind.
For me, the experience was coming to realize that I had, perhaps, been allowing people to see my willingness to go more than half way in relationships. I found I had established a pattern of giving, and giving, and giving, and not speaking up when the friend or associate had not reciprocated, or worse, had even abused me.
That is not the Nicola that people throughout my life have known. I had not even noticed it happening until a sort of "perfect storm." All in one summer, I found myself in the position of finally having to stand up for things I thought were fully understood in the relationships in question, not just once, but on reflection, several times in the space of a few months.
Multiple people in my life--people I loved and considered to be friends of varying degrees, or at least, friendly business associates, manipulated me into a place where I had no choice but to come out swinging. And, while it might sound as though I am vilifying them, I am recognizing that I own a piece of it too. I had failed myself by not speaking up with each of them, much sooner.
Each instance was very different in its nature, and each relationship was tried in a different manner, though the common thread was my silent acquiescence to the small, inch-by-inch, manipulations of taking without giving back.
I am a tiger in business. Nobody who has worked with me would ever describe me as a person who lets such things happen in my negotiations and representations of clients. Yet, with friends, or family, or even associates, outside of the daily tasks I do for clients, I am what the french call, laissez faire, I believe in not micromanaging if I can possibly avoid it. So, I tended to believe that in my friendships and other relationships, things would, for the most part, right themselves, because I had always been transparent with my feelings and my expectations.
So, long story short, I feel as though I fought my way through 2018. I'm not a fighter. I hate it. But, if I must, I will, and I felt forced into a corner over, and over, and over. I have grieved the loss of not one, not two, but several people this year. I mean, true, grieving as in the death of somebody. It was, in fact, the death of relationships I had cared a great deal about, mostly.
2019 will be a year of more advocacy. I will not spend all my effort speaking for my clients; I will also remember to keep that switch on in my personal life and speak more for myself. I will continue to be transparent, but I will add to that my insistence that the people close to me meet me on equal footing. Most in my life do that. For their continued presence in my life I am thankful. I am blessed with an abundance of wonderful people, and I plan to honor and vocally value my relationships with them, even more than I already do.
2018 has been "The Year of the Dog." While I adore dogs, I think I have been too much "the dog" as the Chinese Lunar years describe them.
I will still be all these things, but I will remember to make sure it's deserved, earned. Most of my wonderful circle need not even make any different than they already make; they are those people I seek in my life. And the rest, well, they're pretty much gone now. So, I'm off to a good start!
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