Judgement Poem by Jo Elliott

Judgements were something I felt from all around me, up until a point of being judged in a way that was totally unfair and I was able to see it. The way I was judged was almost detrimental to my character and my career and had I not had the strength to see it, could well have been the bashing of my life. I was judged in a relationship constantly and I started to own what they said, only because they judged me in a way that made me question myself and continue to want a simple and loving life. Little knowing this was so their own needs were met. I had the strength in some ways to keep up my fight, yet it became a battle because I wanted to be with them. I slowly became the frog boiling away in the water heated from cold. Then one day it just got too hot, because they turned up the heat at the wrong time and although I was weakened I was able to crawl out and heal. Whilst I was healing I delved deep inside myself, to find out what I was and what I wasn't. What I had become for them? What I may have become for others. Who I really was. In order to do this I had to look at each judgement people held of me. I looked on them as a pile of books. I threw them up and allowed all of them the chance to come down so I could look at them and decide for myself whether they applied to me or not. The heaviest ones were the ones that stuck from an early age and others seemed to add to, like a chisel being tapped against a sculpture, you are, you are, you are. I had to go back to where it started, to find out whether there was any truth in it and if so, own it, love it, be it. Then there is no need for judgement, when someone thinks they are telling you something about yourself, the words I then use are "I know, it's great isn't it? " or something equally as positive towards myself. If I couldn't find justification for the judgment, then I just plain and simply dismiss it, with "You don't really know me, do you? " whilst adding the time they known me in a time period, that knocks them flat and gives them reason to look at themselves instead of me.