'This ain't a boob, it's a GOD! DAMN! CUP! CAKE!' by Kara
Saturday, August 1, 2015 at 12:02 PM

Going a little serious today, sorry. Me, I mean, not the comic. We don't warn you if the comic goes serious, we just blindside you with a death or dismemberment cuz we love you.

I'm coming to the realisation, a year after going freelance and four and a bit months after the first (Re)Generation Who, that there are people in my life who were only my friends because I was a pushover and never protested. Somewhere along the line I started giving a damn how people treat me, and the unfortunate side effect of that is that I look back at long-standing friendships and realise that I was getting the short end of the stick for a very long time.

Self-respect is a weird thing and I'm still learning to do it. I feel like I have to temper every attempt at it with a self-effacing joke because I still don't feel like I'm allowed to publicly acknowledge that I'm better than bad. Like, even if I objectively do something well, I still feel like if I say so that makes me arrogant.

In the end, it's the friends who straight-up demanded that I respect myself more who have stayed with me and who are as close now as they ever were -- and even as some friendships are lost, others are rebuilt. I have to come to terms with the fact that there are people and things I've outgrown, and that doesn't make me bad. If anything it's better all around that these separations happen. Because the people who only enjoyed the company of a Kara who let herself be talked over or shouted down or who didn't protest when taken advantage of would not like a Kara who will slap a hand that gets too near her ass or actively defend herself tooth and nail, not just her friends.

Not everything about that is happy. There are definitely days when I lie in bed wondering if maybe just being the way I used to be would be easier. I'd still be quietly sad, sure, but I wouldn't have as much conflict outside my head.

Then something reminds me that what I'm doing is good: I get to be part of an amazing project, or I see that something I've done has helped someone else, or I have the opportunity to meet and interact with wonderful people who treat me as an equal. Yeah, there are days when the conflict that not openly hating myself brings makes me want to curl up in a corner and die -- because apparently there are people out there who aren't fond of a Kara who doesn't know her place -- but something eventually comes along that reminds me why I bother.

I don't miss what I've left behind, honestly. I don't miss being passive. I don't miss idling. But you know that awkward interim when you're dieting and working out where you're gaining muscle but not losing weight? I'm in a version of that. I'm having a wash-out of negativity (complete with backlash) and waiting on that next step. It's stuff that has to happen. But I'm getting there.

So, no. I really don't want to go back to any situations with dynamics built largely on that Kara's attitude. They wouldn't last five seconds, and it'd be a really loud, uncomfortable five seconds. I stick with the friends who've stuck with me, the ones who care more about me than they do what they can get out of me, and I go forward.

Change, my dear. And it seems not a moment too soon.

If you have been, ow.