Respect

What is respect?

Is the sweet sounds your young one says as he leaves to go to school in the morning?

Is it the way the waiter smiles at you when you go out for lunch with your girlfriend?

Is it the way your significant other brushes your hair away from your face?

Is it the way someone speaks to you when they know you are having a bad day?

Respect is that thing

That thing that feels so out of reach

That when you look at your past, your present and your future; you say

I was respected

I am respected

I will be respected

Is it just a dream that you wish those in your life understood and knew about?

Is it something you create in a moment of time that flashes out of your brain as quickly as it flashed in?

Is it something you have never experienced or think that you never will experience?

Is it something that you have known or more like a stranger that sits and waits to snatch your feelings in the blink of an eye?

Respect is that thing

That thing that keeps you up at night when you don't receive it from someone you love

It is that thing that you try to grasp, try to hold on to but find out it was never yours to keep

Respect is that thing

That thing that eats at your very core, making you wonder how you could be so stupid

Why did you let it happen again? Why did you let them talk to you that way? Treat you that way?

Disrespect seems more familiar

More like home

Yet it is something you fight, you push away and yet on any given day, it's there

Rearing its ugly head to provide you with just enough self deprivation that you wish, sometimes, you just didn't exist.

Shhh! No one is suppose to know that

Disrespect is something that you feel, you see and hear

It moves around from person to person looking for it's next prey

It holds on to your heart and won't let go, creating chaos in side ways disruption

We don't want to keep it, we don't want to accept it

But we do

Respect is love, a warm feeling that makes you feel as though you were snuggled under a blanket drinking a hot cup of cocoa, don't forget the sprinkles

It is the feeling of feeling safe, loved, home

It brings you to the place where you feel like it is ok to be you without judgement

It makes you believe in Hope and unconditional love

Disrespect rips any of those preconceived notions away

Like a thief, who is just looking for it's next victim

To tear apart, to make feel low, so low

Respect is something created, by you

Decisions you make, behaviors you do or do not accept

Respect starts within yourself

Understanding that you have every right to walk away when disrespect is not serving you

You deserve respect and you create it by the surroundings you keep yourself in

The people you surround yourself with and

The behaviors you accept

Respect starts with you and when it turns to disrespect,

Walk away or become the one we all can blame,

Because what you tolerate is what you get