Growth and the Boomerang Effect

This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System!!! This is an extremely important post. This post is about the events of last nights gathering to celebrate a friends birthday with a group of about 20 people who mostly did not know each other. This post is about possibly the most pivotal moment in my life which occurred last night. This post is about EVERYTHING I learned about ME and the journey of writing this blog to begin with. If you have started my blog from the beginning and I have impacted your life, then STAY RIGHT HERE because last night I used my VOICE to not let a man put me in a tiny box to shut me up.

As I lead you through this I must first set the scene aka “mise en scene”, a term I learned in a Film Study class and a term I have probably used at any and every opportunity because sometimes even I can’t believe what I am saying.

Last night my wonderful boyfriend and I joined in a planned dinner event to celebrate a good friend. Many of us have never met before but that has never bothered me. I remember hosting many parties and bringing all my friends together whose lives would never have crossed paths. The beauty of watching people meet and talk and laugh at a new encounter with a stranger in a happy environment always made me smile. Here is the key to this success and I want everyone to HEAR ME when I say this. Do not have this gathering unless people can move around as opposed to sitting at a long table where we cannot get up and change seats! So here is the scene as the movie begins. We arrive on time and our hosts are seated at the furthest end of the table. A few other people had started taking the seats on either side of them and the table was about half full. We chose to take the seats at the other end of the table so we could face our hosts. As we got comfortable, the rest of the attendees arrived and our seats changed to accommodate a group of 4. My boyfriend took the corner seat and I moved over to sit on his right. This would be a critical move, not for me, but the man that took the seat to my boyfriends left. Seating arrangements are more important than you can even imagine and tonight it was a total failure. The scene is now set.

We have now all gathered and it is impossible to talk to anyone in that space because the environment was loud and the table was very wide. Your options are the people to your immediate right or left. Typically I wouldn’t care and honestly I didn’t. Meet new people. No problem. At that end of the table which I titled “Our Quadrant” the immediate guests were 4 men and 1 other woman besides myself. She was seated with her husband “J” and he decided early on that I would be his target. The only buffer between the two of us is my man. This turns out to be critical at the end.

The conversation begins with him looking right at me and asking what I do for a living. I explain that I am a realtor and that I have been doing that for 22 years. That was it. That’s when he decided that he was going to try to turn me into a small woman with no voice, intelligence or opinion. This was his critical mistake. This is where there boomerang effect happens and the emotional trauma of the past is cracked back open. Keep in mind, not once, not one single moment of the verbal attack he would unleash on me did he ever ask my boyfriend what he did for a living. He didn’t even acknowledge him. He leaned over the table to try to do what a man did to me a long time ago. The entire reason I started this blog! I will tell you I was triggered and still am. As he crafted his questions and words and I kept responding and the energy turned to hostility because he could not break me. I replied intelligently yet with strength in the delivery. He did not like it. I also observed his wife this entire time. Not allowed to speak and tucked in the box of fear if she did. It was obvious he wanted me in that same space. No sir. Not this woman. I see your bullshit and I will call you out. Where did this come from? This was my “growth moment”. Decades later I am winning this but at the cost of the other four people that were witnessing the exchange. No one single moment did I back down to his crafted verbal attack. As this went on and dinner arrived, he would not even let me eat. I finally yelled at him and said “Every single person has finished their meal except me. Leave me alone now because I am eating.” At that moment my boyfriend had enough and grabbed “J”‘s shoulder and said “You are done now. Leave her alone.” I honestly only ate a little of my meal, but I did turn my back on him and focused on my friends that I knew to my right. My boyfriend had to go step outside because honestly, he was that pissed off and knew it might not end well for “J”. Shortly after that moment and when I wasn’t looking, he must have announced to his wife they were leaving. I never saw him leave because I refused to look back at them but his wife had a moment without him and she tapped my back to get my attention. She looked at me and said “I am sorry that happened.” I replied to her “Don’t apologize for him. It’s okay. I will never let a man try to speak to me like that. I know my worth.” She looked right at me and said “Good for you.”

I knew that woman. I was that woman. The woman that had no worth and wasn’t allowed to be successful and strong. It was a moment I never imagined would happen. It was a moment that my boyfriend witnessed and as we spoke about in the car ride home and then at home, he admitted that the next thing that was going to happen to “J” would have been more than a hand on his shoulder but respectfully he said “Babe, you didn’t let him get his way and I am proud of you.”

No one has the right to speak to you in a way that humiliates you or deflates your worth so their emotional bank account feels huge. You have to find the strength to defend verbal abuse because it is damaging to your soul. I know this space well and I am the strongest I have ever been but it took a journey to get here. You can do it too. #avoiceforwomen #whatanight