Kitty Rejection

When I was a little kid my parents had a cat.  I always wanted to pet the cat.  She always ran away from me.  I would chase after her and my parents would tell me to leave her alone.  My grandparents had a cat as well and whenever I was over their house I would try to pet the cat but there cat didn’t like to be petted and would swat at me.  I would persist and eventually seeing that I was not getting the message the cat would eventually bite me.  When I told my grandparents the cat bit me they would tell me that is his way of saying leave me alone.  I would never listen to my parents or grandparents and would continually be rejected by these cats.

But as I grew older I realized these cats were right and that not everyone likes everyone.  Throughout life I always wanted to be liked by everyone and would be upset if people didn’t like me or if we just didn’t hit it off and get along great.  Even the rejection of the cats stuck with me.  But I began to realize as I got older that I needed to just be comfortable with myself and like myself the rest would take care of itself.  Motivational speaker and author Louise Hay speaks of this concept of loving yourself and that when you love and accept yourself your “relationships either improve, or the negative ones dissolve and new ones begin.”  I think that is true because it makes simple sense as part of the nature of relationships.  When you accept yourself you are more at ease in your relationships and comfortable and others pick up on that and in turn feel more comfortable and at ease.  And as you gain more confidence in yourself and your healthy relationships you can let go of the unhealthy relationships.  We are social beings after all so we need relationships to thrive a recent study just showed that.  We only have a finite time in this life so we need to choose how we spend our time and who we spend it with wisely.

The cats of my early childhood may have simply not liked me because I didn’t know how to approach them or maybe they just didn’t like me because they didn’t like me but either way they had the right to choose who to spend time with just like we all do.  Although it may be painful we all have to choose who to spend our time with on this earth and accept the consequences of those choice after all it is our life.  And believe me I know the pain of rejection or dissolving unhealthy relationships it is not easy but we have to respect others who choose not to spend time with us and we have to respect ourselves to choose who we spend time with.  Some people just don’t mix with others for whatever reason the connection just doesn’t happen for one or both parties.  But with so many different people out there connections will happen it is the natural course of things just make sure you are in a good place and the rest will happen naturally.  Has anyone struggled with rejection or breaking away from destructive relationships out there?  I would very much like to hear and share feelings and experiences with this since I know it can be a difficult thing to navigate.