“Hear, but don’t listen”. This is what one of my “friends” told me when I randomly called her crying. The reason I was crying was because I had just gone through another round of verbal abuse from my father which consisted of him telling me how useless and annoying I was, as if these were things I did not already tell myself. So, when I called this girl because I had no one else to go to (well until I got on here) she told me that I have the choice of letting the words from my dad harm me. She said that I can hear what he is saying without listening to it. It’s kind of like letting water pass under a bridge.  You can acknowledge that it’s there without paying much attention to it. I thought that this was a very interesting way of looking at it.

I am one of those people who take a lot of things to heart, even when somebody is joking, but I never tell anyone that I’m hurt (least of all my dad). My dad is a pastor so you would think that he would be all cheery and spiritual. all the time, but no. He’s just a regular old hurtful dad. He was one of the first people that told me that if people are sad they obviously don’t have Jesus, so I think that was the last time that I spoke to him about how I was feeling.

I think that now I finally understand what this girl was saying. I am not going to try and drown out the hateful words with thoughts of my own, but I’m going to just let the words pass through me–in one ear and out the other. This is something that I hope a lot of you take to heart. Any patronizing or hurtful words can only harm you if you choose to let it. Don’t worry because there are people like me who are rooting for you. I hope this inspired atleast one person today. Thanks for reading…

Sincerely your wannabe writer,

Abi