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do you ever get these intense feelings of nostalgia? or maybe it's yearning...? itwhatever it is, i get them every once in a while. not really for anything that i've experienced in this past. maybe for something in another life.

what did i do in my other lives? who was i? was i essentially the same person i am now? or was i stronger, less naive, stood up for myself when push came to shove?

if there's one thing i'm ashamed of in this life, it's how i've allowed others to treat me. how weak and ineffectual i am. i never thought about it before. coming out of the bad situation, i question myself. deeply question who i am. am i really the door mat, the person everyone bullies, the one they beat down (or the one who allows themselves to be beaten down) and gets taken advantage of? it's sad to say but i think i am, or may have been all along, or had the potential of being.

it's funny because i remember when i was younger i used to claim to be so strong. i had no idea what the hell i was talking about. i'd never been tested for that strength before so what did i know?

i left the situation but i feel as if i left cowed, crippled, crushed. i may have walked away but my dignity is in shreds. am i always going to question myself like this? it's a hard lesson to learn; people treat you the way you let them treat you. but i look around myself and realize that there are still people in my life who almost run my life- they have so much power over me. it's demoralizing to wonder if it's always going to be like this, to wonder if it's me- ME. do i invite this treatment somehow? are people always going to treat me like this? am i always going to let peopel walk all over me?

the answer would probably be an easy one- or an easy one to say- "no". but when push comes to shove, what will really happen? and that's the answer i'm consciously afraid of because it might not be the easy answer.

so perhaps the nostalgia is of me in another life. stronger.