I Wish Someone Told Me To Disengage Whenever This Happened
A relationship, scene, or job that does any of these things is DOA.
Recently, I had to make a lot of major life decisions I didn’t want to do. I won’t get into details, but I realized that if I kept up my work schedule and my lifestyle, I’d die. That’s not an exaggeration; I was in the hospital from overwork.
If I want a livable life, I’m going to have to tear everything down and rebuild from the ground up. Part of this was realizing what was not working. In my life? That included:
An overpriced living situation. My apartment became unaffordable when my industry collapsed. I have to rebuild all my finances because of this.
Clients who didn’t appreciate me. Deadass, I had someone invest in an unfinished comic rather than my book that was done. I just wish I knew why I wasn’t worth investing in. Sadly, if I could have relied on my clients’ claims of permanence, I would have been able to get out of my financial hole.
People who hated me but demanded access to me. This mostly dealt with music scenes and people who like my husband but hated me. The final blow was when I was asking for help only for certain people to turn their nose up at me.
People I prioritized who didn’t care about me at all. Some of those people shocked me. I really thought it was mutual.
People who were just cunts. Yep. Fuck it. I’ll say it. I deserved better around me.
In other words, I wore myself out trying to win over people who never were going to do anything but fuck me over. I felt like, if I struggled harder, maybe they’d see the light. Maybe I’d be enough.
The crazy thing is that I always thought that I was smarter than doing the “Pick Me” dance. I really did. And yet, at the end of the day, I was doing it harder than anyone else I know. I was that desperate to be wanted.
Looking back, much of what led to my hospitalization should have never happened. There were warning signs that I was not going to get a good outcome with the people I was surrounded by.
Sometimes, I just really needed someone else to tell me that dropping people is a smarter move than trying to force one’s hand. I wish someone would have told me, “YO! Disengage with these fucks.”
The more I looked over how everything fell apart, the more I noticed the most toxic relationships were the ones that had these issues in common.
I couldn’t get people to focus on a specific task or communicate with me.
I had a client who hired me for a niche dating coaching site. As soon as I got hired, I had an outline for him. Two months later, nothing came of the outline despite regular calls to him asking him to record the lessons.
Like with many of my other clients, I felt like I had to hound him for minor tweaks, quick conversations, and more. The more I chased him, the less he listened to me. Honestly, I should have cut off that relationship after the first month.
The moment I don’t get responses in a timely manner or have “surprises” sprung on me is the moment I should have recognized these people don’t take my time seriously.
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