contained in this post: a dog with spaghetti on his head.

There's not much that's pretty about it, but it's true:

Sometimes, you just have to tell everybody to shut the hell up.

this might be my new favorite picture in the world.

Sometimes, you reach a breaking point. You haven't been okay with things, but you've just kept your mouth shut. Maybe you've been functioning in a system that malfunctions; maybe you've lost yourself, little by little, in just trying to just keep quiet. I don't have the energy for. I just don't want to listen to. It's easier to just.

And there are times, so many times, when you swear, oh my god, I'm just going to, I can't even, when I see them I'll say, and then the moment comes, and the air is thick with it, you just know how huge the fight will be, and that the fight will play out over the next several interactions, because it's not as much about the other person's actions as it is about the way they see you, the way they see themselves and the world, and the ways they treat you in light of it all, and it's not a one-shot deal. And you know it'll be long, drawn-out, mostly silent, and toxic and petulant, and seriously, who ever has the energy for that kind of thing.

So you swallow it down. It burns in your esophagus, turns food into acid; it pounds in your head; it pulls your eyelids over your eyes to escape the conflict twisting in your gut, the conflict you absorb instead of drawing a clear line of shut. the. hell. up. Because nice people don't say shut the hell up; nice people, people who love other people, try to find ways to deal with it. And Christians, in particular - I'm not flinging crap; I am a Christian. But gah, the exhaustion of navigating Grace And Unintentional Martyrdom - God says to respond to each other with grace, and responding to this with grace is impossible for me; I need to do better with this, to extend more grace to this situation, to love them better. I'm the only one who's hurt or upset here. What am I doing wrong.

It all gets so confusing. Laying yourself down on The Altar Of Poor Boundaries before you realize what you're doing, because it's so stealth, so insidious.

And whatever finally trips your trigger, whether you pop like a champagne-bottle cork or slowly work up to your shut-the-hell-up - it feels a little jittery, a little foreign, to plant yourself there, to stomp out your intent after so much tiptoeing. But you realize that it's right, that you're out of practice in being a self. And you realize:

It's about their behavior, yes. But sometimes, you have to lay down some shut the hell up because you're the one who shut the hell up to begin with.  

Actually, no: THIS is my new favorite picture.

Sometimes, you relaxed your boundaries. You just wanted to be nice. You thought, just this once, or just occasionally; it's not that bad; I can deal with it. You didn't anticipate they'd mow you down like they did. You wanted to belong.

Sometimes, you were too tired to use your backbone.

Sometimes, you just didn't want to risk speaking up.

But then, down the road, you realize you're exhausted, because you've accepted a role in a system that's built on a giant, steaming pile of vermin-inhabited, sun-fermenting BULLSHIT. You're not responsible for their behavior, but you're responsible for how you participate in the system; you're responsible for how much of the bullshit you allow to infect everything else on your plate.

And eventually, when you're tired of being exhausted, when you're tired of feeling undermined and powerless, when the SHUT-THE-HELL-UP wells up inside you and you wonder where it's been this whole time:

You remember who you are.

You remember what shut the hell up means when YOU say it: here's the line. i trust the lines i draw. do not cross them. if you choose to, i choose myself over you. bye. 

You remember that shutting down for the purposes of self-preservation in an unhealthy system is a killing thing.

You remember that participation in such a system nullifies any concept of neutral in the eyes of the system; you are Part Of The Family, or you are not. You're a captive, spineless lemming, or you are an outlier in a system which devalues you.

You remember that you're lonely in either choice, but you're intact in only one of them.

You remember that the black-and-white nature of each role has absolutely nothing to do with you. You didn't set up the choice. It's not your system.

You remember that the system counts on you flying under the radar and avoiding a fight and just don't want to have to deal with the upset - the system is built on the very denial which fuels the delusion of neutrality.

And ultimately, you remember: it's a lonely thing, to refuse a system which erodes and assimilates you; it's a horrible, painful, confusing, exhausting and lonely thing, though, to extricate yourself from such a system.

You remember more than that, but you're so full of vegan mac and cheese that you can't exactly think strai - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.