Where Rose Writes Very True Stories

Sticking my belly out ‘cause I gotta show off this kick-ass shirt!

I have this image in my head of a very tired camel right beneath a mountain. A torrent of rain causes a small mudslide to tumble down onto the camel, causing it to fall flat on its stomach and breaking its back.

People run up to it, seeing it buried in the mud. “What happened?” “How did this bit of mud break your back?” “Your back wasn’t very strong, then. It should’ve been able to withstand that mudslide.”

But what the people don’t understand, and the camel doesn’t know how to explain, is that it was actually carrying the whole mountain. Its back was cracked and weary. The rain and shift in weight caused by the mudslide finally broke it.

My back broke. Not really—metaphorically. Because I didn’t know how to put down my mountain.

I’m still under it. And I still don’t know how to put it down. I got no advice. Just know that, if you’re carrying a mountain that you don’t have words to explain—I understand. I’m sorry you’re carrying one, too. I’m tired, too. I get it.

I think, maybe a place to start, is to not let people put more rocks on it. Right? When they approach, “Here, take this rock for me,” say, “BACK OFF! KEEP YOUR ROCK TO YOURSELF!”

This is something I’ve been trying to do lately. Because there’s finally come a point where I’ve had to ask, “How is this mountain so ginormous? Where did all these rocks come from?” “How do I keep meeting people who so terribly mistreat me? How does this keep happening?”

And I realized… I don’t have enough strong boundaries. I don’t call people out when they toss rocks on me. I have learned to accept mistreatment from others because, at one major-and-prolonged point in my life, it felt safer than standing up for myself.

That is a tough thing to unlearn.

When you start doing that, you will meet resistance. Because people are so used to you just taking their rocks, sometimes you’ll get accused of not thinking of other people’s perspectives enough. And today, while pondering this, I said out loud, in my house, by myself, “I’M TRYING TO THINK OF MY OWN PERSPECTIVE FOR ONCE! You have NO IDEA what a big deal this is for me!”

That really hit me.

📚🌹