When I was a young girl I went to the movie with my then two year older sister. There was a boy in my class that I had a crush on. He would not have been interested in me because I was overweight and not someone that would be worthy of his attention. During the movie he asked my sister to come and sit with him for the show. I had shared with her how I felt earlier and yet she accepted his invitation. I was very hurt and had so many emotions going through me it was hard to make sense of them at the time. Years later I wondered why I had suppressed all of them? Why couldn’t I say how I felt? Why did I feel that I deserved it? Why did I keep quiet to avoid any further humiliation? The thing with jealousy is that it seems to go hand in hand with anger and suppression. First you get jealous, then you feel angry about it, and finally you suppress it because you are embarrassed about it. What is that all about? There is a part of us that always feels it has to suppress our true nature and hide our vulnerability. We seem to learn to do this at a very young age. Maybe if we had the courage to speak our truth there would be less pain and deceit in the world. Had I just said to my sister, ”Hey, I don’t want you accepting an invitation to sit with him, where is your loyalty?” Maybe she would have realized her wrong doing and I would have avoided the on going irritation, anger, and suppression, that followed our relationship all of our years. Of course, she knew that I was hurt, but if we can’t stand up for ourselves, if we don’t feel we are worth it, people will disregard us. We end up blaming them, but in reality we let ourselves down. Hiding our vulnerability, being afraid to show our weaknesses, is something that we need to teach our children early on not to avoid doing. That incident was the beginning of a lifetime of painful experiences between my sister and I that continued a lifetime and eventually ruined our relationship. I didn’t know it at the time but, she was a teacher for me and all I needed to do was to learn to stand up for myself. If I had done that then all the betrayals would stopped. Maybe many of them would never have happened. There is something to learn about ourselves in every relationship, even the ones where we feel we have been wronged. Speak out, don’t hide your feelings, and your life lessons will be fewer because of it. Know that you should be your biggest fan, your most loyal companion, and the first one to stand up for yourself.