Do Me

I hear a lot of people using the phrase 'I gotta do me'. I heard it for a third time yesterday, in one day I might add. In one day, I heard that said to me three times. Not in the same context every time. Thank goodness for that, because it probably would have thrown me into an emotional hurricane. Which I am not far from, believe it or not.

It irritates me when I see or hear that phrase. First of all, what does it even mean? My first thoughts are 'It's not even proper English. Who the hell came up with this mess?'. My second thought is to actually listen to what is being said before and after. Why do they 'gotta do them'?

I've never used that term. Wanna know why? Because it's selfish. It's greedy. It's against everything I stand for.

I have a family. A husband. A son. Three cats. A mom. A dad. Two sisters. A brother. Mother in Laws. Stepmothers. Stepfathers. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. Best friends.

I don't have time to 'do me'.

I make sure every single one of them is happy. Safe. Comfortable. Where they want to be in life, even if it doesn't include me.

What a slap in the face when friends and family say that to me.

I live in a room the size of a postage stamp. With my husband and my four month old who can't sleep with other people in his room. I don't sleep. My husband doesn't sleep. My cats hate the house we are in and have made it a point to escape whenever the opportunity strikes. An escape that resulted in a 300 dollar vet bill that put us in a financial hole and now my cat hates me.

I've shouted. Cussed. Vented. Cried. But I haven't been selfish.

I've listened to people threaten me. I've weighed the option of living in a cardboard box over where I am in life right now. But I have quite literally smiled and moved on. Ignored the dark rain cloud over my head and focused on my son and my husband. The only two lights at the end of my tunnel.

I have plenty of support. Not everyone can drop what they are doing and help me. Hell, I don't even ask for help. I just struggle on my own. I know we all fight battles not everyone can see.

Just don't stare at me while I'm drowning and keep putting life preservers around your own body when you are standing on the shore.

Now, if I had listened to a conversation and it was the first time in months that I'd heard someone say that, I wouldn't have batted an eye. I would have went on with my day.

But I heard it three times..

All I could think of past the anger and the resentment was:

Why is my family not important enough?

Why do we have to be stuffed into a closet?

When do we get to 'do us'?

I got angrier with every passing second. Why are humans so goddamn selfish? Why do they see someone who could be their own flesh and blood and just watch them sink?

I've been playing it in my mind all day. The anger just keeps piling up higher and higher and I can't see over the top of it anymore.

When my husband goes to work, I curl up somewhere with my son and promise him it won't be like this forever. I'm going to fix this. I'm going to give you a life better than this.

All I can hear while I say it is:

Find somewhere else to live.

Kicked out.

Homeless.

So think real hard who you're saying 'I gotta do me' to. Because you could be tearing their entire world down with those words.

It doesn't mean you can't 'do you'. It means you need to step out of that persons life and stop boasting about 'doing you'. Their life is hard enough without it being thrown into their face that they are at rock bottom and you have better things to do than to throw out one of the twenty life preservers around yourself.

Be kind. Be sensitive. Be careful.

Honesty is good, but there is a line where that goes into a cruelty. People don't need to be reminded that their life sucks.

So don't rub it in.