Mantras & Hiccups

I have a few mantras.  Larry taught me about those.  One of the greatest coping mechanisms I have.

A mantra is what gets me through a run.  Through an argument.  Through tears.  Through conversations with people who annoy me.

Simple and repetitive.  There's a good chance if you don't know what I'm thinking (which for some of you, is quite often) Im repeating something in my head that sounds like this:

Don't freak out.  Don't freak out.  Don't freak out.


I can do anything for (insert time frame here, i.e. "two weeks" "one semester" "today").


She's hurting.  She's hurting.  She's hurting.


For the longest time, I've been repeating a mantra to myself and teaching it to others, which I know to be more true than almost anything.

You teach people how to treat you.


I know them to be true.  Because I've seen it.  For the codependent, for the insecure, for the people-pleasing we must repeat these words to ourselves on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

My heart knows it.  My mind knows it.

Which is rare.  There's almost always a disparity between the two.  In this case, there's no miscommunication.  There's nothing lost in translation.  There is a strong, steady connection between what I logically know and what I feel.  The break comes in the action steps.  In the doing, rather than the saying.  In the steps, rather than the knowing.

I try my hardest to treat people the way I want to be treated.  I try and take care of people.  I try to encourage.  I try to motive.  I try to comfort.  I try to respect.

Again, if you don't know what I'm thinking, there's a good chance that my busy mind is watching you.  Figuring you out. Because you are important to me.  The barista, the bartender, the gas station attendant, the child, the teacher, my best friends.  You matter to me.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in this world who don't think, act, or live like this.

And very often I feel the repercussions of this broken world in that very way.

I don't do it in order for it to reciprocated.

Which is why this long-lived mantra, you teach others how to treat you, is so important.

In my subconscious I fight an eternal battle.  Metaphors run through my mind constantly.  Spinning tires, growing muscles.  Some days I feel like I'm waging a war while suffering from a case of emotional hiccups.

A hiccup is just a spasm in your diaphragm.  That's why just holding your breath doesn't work.  Why drinking water upside down makes you look silly.  And why scaring the hell out of someone almost always works.

I get the hiccups and I stop whatever I'm doing.  Put my hand on my stomach.  Breathe in slowly through my nose, hold it for a second, and then intentionally breathe out through my mouth.  Even as my diaphragm fights the spasm, it's fixing itself.  It's a rhythm thing, hiccups are.

Hiccups come when your body's lost its rhythm.

What do hiccups have to do with anything, you ask?

In our daily lives, hiccups show up everywhere.  They're the result of us losing our rhythm.

So daily, as I remind myself to teach people how to treat me, sometimes I lose my rhythm.

Especially with men.

Rephrase: especially with boys who think they're men.

I used to believe that no members of the opposite sex found me physically attractive.  This was a hiccup. A loss of rhythm, an untruth.  But I believed it.  It consumed me like the worst case of the hiccups always does.  Embarrassing.  Annoying.  Persistent.

On a consistent basis I was told that I had a beautiful heart, a great personality, but "he" (the multiple, "he"s) did not find me attractive.  These are the kind of hiccups that you forget about until you're about to speak, and then you release an awkward noise instead of words.

I found my rhythm again about a year ago.  Inhaled, put my hand on my proverbial stomach, and exhaled until I found it again.

But a new case of the hiccups found me not long after.  A different case.  The kind that hurt.

I know now this is not true.  That I have my own beauty.  In my own simple way I can be physically attractive.

The paradox, however, is I found the "men" whose eyes find me pleasing do not care about my heart.  My personality.  My character.  The most important, attractive characteristics I bear.  The paradigm shifted.  And I caught more hiccups.

You teach people how to treat you.


The teaching process is painful.  It means lots of loneliness.  An unprecedented effort to weed out.  It means hardening.  It means calluses.  It's education and preparation.

I look back to almost a year ago now, and I realize how little I knew.  What I have learned, through experience, observation, trial, and error, is invaluable.  But I paid a high price for it.

The only comfort I find in this mantra is it keeps things in my control.

At any moment, if I can muster up the courage, I can change my circumstances.

Granted, "change" means walking away.  It means a quiet shake of the head.  A break in eye contact.  It means moving his hand.  It means not even trying.  Not even responding.  It means walking through rooms where all, or not a single eye turns your way.

Those small actions sound easy.  But I've learned.  And I know.  You know too, if you've been here.  Those tiny actions, those small steps, set you apart.  They're the hardest to take.

And set apart is an unbelievably lonely place to live.

Inhale.


You teach people how to treat you.  By what you tolerate.  By what you require.  By the way you respond.  By the standards you set for yourself.  By the way you hope and the faithfulness in which you wait.

Exhale.  Slowly this time.  


Searching for the rhythm.  The rhythm set by your heart.  The pace set by your spirit.  


So internal.  Determined by only you.


Hiccup.  You use it to describe a minor setback in a plan.  A wrinkle.  A temporary disparity.

But sometimes hiccups last a long time.  A long, long time.

Then you breathe.

And they're gone.