I Am a Porous Rock

I am both selfless and selfish.
I don't want to be self-righteous or a martyr, but that's what I am.  That's what you all make me.

I am empathetic.  I feel other people's pain like it's my own.  I would take a bullet in the hallway for a child I don't even know, because sacrifice is what allows me to see humanity.  I will protect others - even if tough love is in order - because I believe in righteousness.  I believe in love.  I believe that the only way to be whole is to let go of the internal, primal mechanism of self-preservation and to help preserve humanity as a whole.

The central conflict is that you all see that in me.  Some people see how to manipulate me right away.  I can handle those people.  They don't matter as much.  What kills me, every day, is that the people I choose to love are the people who truly know me, and then they/you use my empathy as a weapon, against me.

When I love, I do it completely,  Wholly.  I would do anything for someone I love.  And, in my experience, the people who know I love them are the best at poking holes into the tough (but sometimes aluminum-thin) exterior of my soul.  You're predatory.  You see something in me which you thought was strong, but has deep vulnerabilities.

Then you pounce.

Maybe you don't mean to.  (I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.) And yet you still eat away at the soft spots - the sore spots - because you know I will give you what you want.  You know I will be there.  You know I have become (essentially) a doormat.  You win.

That's when you lose me.  One too many times, and you lose credibility.  You lose the very best thing I have to give to anyone, which is:  the best version of me.  You take advantage.  You stop trying.  You forget.

The truth is:  I am I.  I have to be able to stand alone, or I am nothing.  And you assisted in getting me here - to this place in my self-awareness   ...  again.  Because it seems that I have to keep coming back here again (in this vapid wasteland of self-loathing and self-pity and inertia) in order to see that YOU are not the answer to ME.

I have to be the rock.  The island.