I have started choosing a word every year to represent the thing I feel I need to work on to improve myself. Last year was 'growth', and I learned and grew and expanded myself in ways I hadn't even expected. It was a good word, it was what I needed at the time, and it helped. This year, the word I chose, without quite knowing why, was Strength. It's what I feel I need in most areas of my life, and so it's what I'm going to try to improve upon through the months to come.

Now to me, strength is being your own advocate. It's being willing to speak up, voice shaking or not, and tell someone No, you will NOT treat me or others this way. It's being willing to be blunt and take judgement, because you are being true to yourself. It's something that, most of my life, was incomprehensible and would have ended with me getting hit or screamed at. Enough. I'm not a helpless child, and the people who treated me that way are, for the most part, no longer able to effect my life in any way.

But there is something that bothers me. There are a handful of people that have, no matter how many times I tried to contact them, proven time and again that they can't be bothered to do the same. They claim to be my friend, sure, and will happily take advantage of my generosity or get in touch if they have something to vent, but when I want to talk to them or I have something going on, they can't so much as lift a finger to text me. One of the people who has been like this to me, I have not gotten a reply in almost six months. I've reached out, and been ignored utterly. Hell, I got that person a gift for Solstice... Winter Solstice of 2015. It's still sitting on a shelf waiting.

Well, forget that.

Those people, I am done with. That is not friendship, that is me being used. If you're a person that like to me (most of you aren't), and you actually WANT to be my friend, then sent me a message privately. You may not actually be on this particular list, few people are really. The ones who are though, I'm giving two weeks. I am posting this or something very like it across ALL social media that I'm present on, and when two weeks have passed, I am removing the people who have treated me this way. Off my friends list, off my contacts, out of my life.

I am taking a little time to advocate for myself in this way because frankly, I am not going to continue to stress and panic over whether someone is or is not my friend. You may not understand the feelings of self doubt and outright shame this can cause a person, but you don't have to understand. You do have to accept that this is a valid need I have, and that if you choose to be my friend, that it means carrying your part of the friendship instead of leaving it to me to carry both sides.