I Let So Many People Beat Me Down

I'm sorry to myself that I let so many people beat me down, abuse me, and try to break me. In the end, sometimes I think you did break me, but then I realize you didn't. If you had, I would still be around you, begging for your attention like a sad little puppy and hoping for a crumb of your love and affection. But I'm not, am I? I guess you'll never understand that, either, how I could be so unlike all the others you have trampled beneath your selfish feet, how I could refuse to let you chain me and train me to cringe at your command. I'm sorry to myself that I ever let myself doubt my own strength and my own righteousness and my own intelligence, and my own right to BE WHO I AM. I was not the problem. YOU were. Now that all of you are gone, out of my life, unable to hurt or use or abuse me any more, the problems are magically gone, too. Coincidence? Nope. Don't think so. Thank God I realized that I could live as a human being, if only I let myself get away from those of you who are NOT human beings.