Excoriating Me
And cultivating tougher skin
Sometimes I reach out to people.
Sharing knowledge I paid for in blood, sweat, and tears, makes me feel good, as if I got more than my money’s worth. Maybe I just love a bargain. It’s an extension of motherhood, I think.
I’m a counselor, retired educator, professional mom, amateur herbalist, gardener, cake decorator — all learned the hard way; I could help you with a few things if you need it.
Usually, it’s a simple matter to find someone who needs help badly enough to want it.
However
About once every ten years, or so, it backfires in a major way; some of us just do not want help, but rather, want misery, because it generates drama.
Because, why live if there’s no drama, right?
In the process of backfiring, most of those people malfunction, reacting far beyond the requirements for cruelty.
Leaving lots of bodies in their wake.
Using ALL CAPS to indicate they are yelling.
Misusing what they presume are accurate data and accurate grammar.
Not deleting expletives.
Misspelling names
You know the type.
Usually, when it’s in the public eye, I do my best to preserve calm and keep my feathers collected. Maybe I’ll consult an expert or two, to be sure of what I do is legal.
In my private times and spaces, I try to maintain cheer (although that’s a tough job) and find a soul who will listen and encourage and point to the main road before I get overly lost.
During the rests between those people, I think hard about how to help even more. I write, speak, teach, clean my house…. Because why live if there’s nothing to do, right?
The house, at least, is appreciative.
And there’s always something to do! Always!
Besides drama, I mean.
However
Sometimes, the best thing for me to do is write something for me, speak encouragement into me, counsel me.
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me? (Psalm 42:5 NKJV)
I tell myself the things I would have told others, the things that make some of them so very irritated.
And honestly? Those things make me irritated too, when I tell them to myself.
But I don’t excoriate myself like they do.
Or so I thought.
I always thought to excoriate meant “to dig the heart out.” That’s what it always felt like to me, when they stomped on my help.
Wrong. So wrong.
It’s about scraping off the skin.
Road rash, rug burn, only by degrees and on purpose
This is the meaning of the word I kept using and wow, all along, someone was actually excoriating me.
That someone was me.
It’s true: When life navigates us down a narrow road full of bumps, we could fall off the wagon, as I did. But I landed with an inelegant thud. No dragging through the streets.
What happened next resembled scratching a bad itching place, too much.
Really, if we cling to injurious treatment by our foes, revisiting, replaying the movie in our heads, and tend to scratch that itch, the irritation will pain us even more and then, infaction and disability could follow fast on its heels.
A gal can get really sick that way; downcast, being disquieted, deep within
When actually, we know all things work together for good, which gives hope, which anchors the soul. And when we grab onto the joy that is always before us, we find endurance wrapped in the package with it.
So I was really dumb. But I’m smarter now.
