What do you need to be vindicated?

No need. Not in a situation where I am not believed.

None really. At this point in my life, my struggle is to be left the fuck alone.

I like @cookieman‘s answer. Just leave me alone, please. The people who are important to me know the truth.

Don’t need vindication, now I’m working on not needing affirmation.

I have struggled enough to be believed on work front. Don’t need to prove anything on personal front. So nothing for me as of now.

I would like for the population of my country (or at least a vast majority) to recognize my humanity and right to be alive despite the fact that I was born into an expensive body.

I guess I carry more “chips” than most here.

I want to be vindicated that:

Whatever gifts and opportunities I’ve been given haven’t been wasted…
My wife chose a partner who makes her and her life better…
My kids and I aren’t a drain on the planet…
Working for myself isn’t a mistake or burden on my family or future…
I can operate ethically and the world won’t eat me alive for keeping ideals…

Just off the top of my head.

I need to stop feeling the need to prove myself to people, just be enough, happy in my own skin and stop this achievement-based self approval. It just never stops and I’m 45 years old, it’s wearing me out.

@Aethelwine: Amen to that.

@janbb: You are an amazing penguin. You are an intelligent penguin. You are a kind penguin.

@KNOWITALL: I agree with you there. I’m approaching all done with that as well.

@cookieman When I stop preening my feathers, I’ll bake you a cookie.

Nothing I can accomplish or achieve will ever change other people’s assumptions, judgements and conclusions about me. They have already made up their minds who I am and what I’m capable of. If and when I step out of their mold of my abilities then they will never accept it.

This has happened to me. People I’ve known since childhood and also people that I’ve worked many years with won’t have anything to do with me. Why? I suppose that jealousy of my success is a factor or perhaps I have proved them wrong about me. In their minds they can’t get past the mental box that they put me in or the fact that my life has turned out better than theirs. Sad.

Nowadays, (after a lot of hard work) all I need is to know my own truth. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.

To be heard and considered viable.

Diction.

I believe there really is such a thing as “normal” and not “normal”.

@YARNLADY: Yes, but does your normal go to 11?

I am still fucking livid. My really good friend in high school, a friend so good he had a key to my apartment (I lived with my sister at the time). He had a shelf in the fridge.

So after high school he goes off to fight forest fires and it is my ex’s bday. So I catch his GF fucking a dude in the basement. And it was not a random dude. It was his best friends brother banging his GF.

I did not say anything right away and they did not see me.

But later I mentioned it. I was not believed. So I lost a lot of good friends from high school for telling the truth.

This was before facebook…

So as these fuckheads wrote me off I had just started working at the theater and made new, cooler friends.

Ten years on. My sister had a BBQ at her house. We have a overlapping set of friends. There were a few hundred people there. The dude that was a good friend and his GF banged a dude was there.

Funny thing here is he broke up with her shortly after. Shocker, for cheating. So I try to ask the dude how it is going after a decade. He introduces me to his wife and kid and then tells me to fuck off. This is at my sisters house. Stephanie did bang Jesse in the basement. I had just got off work and was sober.

@Johnpowell If you were my brothr dude would have been asked to take his rude self home. You did him a solid and got all the blowback, that sucks.

@KNOWITALL: I didn’t know you were so street. Not sure if I should be confused or aroused.

Lol, I’m complicated. Been through many things in life from church to a gang, to party animal to an elected official. I’m an Aquarian, we’re weird like that. Be aroused, most men love the crap out of me and my sassy mouth lol

^someone who you want to have your back :)

@Aethewine That’s the nicest compliment I’ve got in awhile, thank you.