Ever sat there and thought if you hadn’t met that one person, how different your life would be? Me too. And not always in the whole “you’ve changed my life for the better” sense. In fact, the complete opposite. Despite this, so many lessons have been learnt that wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the shitheads that we unfortunately meet in life.

Some people come into your life disguised as the knight in shining armour; the saviour and the answer to all your problems. When that disguise slips and the true person starts to shine through, it’s a big slap in the face. You feel naive. Why didn’t I see this coming? How easily can people pull the wool over my eyes? You were seeing the best in them, focusing on the positives and believing that this person is the sole answer to you being able to feel “normal”. Lesson well learnt.

When this happens, I personally find it extremely hard to forget and it means I take this distrust into future relationships and convince myself that they’re going to do the same to me. Difficulty to trust + anxiety disorder = awful.

“Not everyone you lose, is a loss” I couldn’t agree with this statement more and I have had this proven to me in many ways. I believe that everyone you meet has something to teach you, and sometimes that’s to stop letting shitty people do shitty things to you. Simple as that. If somebody is continuing to do something that hurts you; makes you anxious or causes you distress, sack them off right now. They don’t respect you or your feelings, why would you want that in your life?

Something I will always remember is being told “its not about why are they treating me this way, its about why are you letting them?”. However, I didn’t always stick to this advice and I found that at my lowest I was allowing certain people to disrespect me, lie to me and set my anxiety levels to an all-time high. Why? Because those rose-tinted spectacles were way too comfortable and I told myself I was just being paranoid, just overthinking and being too sensitive. When those glasses came off and I saw my world for how it had really become, I made a promise to myself. To put myself first, trust my gut and give myself the respect I had been depriving myself of for so long.