Okay, so today I was thinking about how most of my life I’ve always been the giver and many people around me took advantage of that fact. Due to the amount of trauma and isolation I’ve experienced I was never dumb, but I was very naive, gullible and easy to get over on during my younger years. I was conditioned to feel like the more I gave a person materially, the more I was showing love. I had these ways of thinking and living, not fully realizing that those habits were a direct product of my upbringing. I was surrounded by wolves, users, con-artists and manipulators, so every educated person should know how the story goes…I attracted the very same people I grew up with despite me having a different mindset. But anyways, today I was reminded that every year— for the people I loved, I would go out of my way to always find them a special gift that usually would take hours, if not days for me to come up with. I used gift-giving as a way to show a person that they are loved and valued. So in one relationship I had, not only did I buy the person a nice car—in fact it was the first legal car the person ever owned because they didn’t they didn’t have a license, nor had they ever had insurance or anything in their name other than a phone. Besides, the car, I always brought the person the best shoes, clothes, hats, and made sure we ate at the best restaurants that my money could afford. I did this from my heart because the person didn’t have much. My plan was to help the person I loved find a middle class trade, clear their record, improve their credit, obtain a license, and get through school, so that eventually, the person could stand on their own two feet, without needing me to always be a mother figure to a grown man. So I put my plan into action. I helped the person accomplish everything I said I would and guess what happened? As soon as that person got on his feet, he took my resources, my teachings, and our shared money and used it to lavish gifts and secret trips for another woman, while giving crumbs to me and the household. One year for my birthday, this person brought me three Yankee candles and a card. Now, normally, this would have been acceptable to me, if it was all the person had, and it came from the heart— because I have a large amount of humility. However, because in the back of my mind, I knew this man had spent thousands on Gucci, lavish vacations, and all types of other things for himself and the person that he cheated on me with, it was actually like a slab in the face, and I think he knew that honestly. He would never admit it, but all the tiny clothes and the style of clothes he got caught browsing clearly was for another woman and not me. All the fancy vacations and exotic places he viewed that was never discussed with me, made it easy to see that it was for another woman. The point of this story is you can give a person the world, and they’ll go sit it at another person’s feet, while degrading and abusing you in the process. So be careful who you try to help, and lift up. Don’t become a build-a-bear factory like I was. Make sure a person can carry their own, be open and honest, and take accountability for their actions.
Creative Intelligence 