Respect

This week, I feel like talking about respect.
Respect is a weird thing.
You can lose respect for stupid crap you can't help, or you can gain it for similar reasons.
Most people are taught to respect authority, the elderly and their parents.
Then there are those that respect no one and act like you have to earn it.

Myself, I give you respect as long as you treat me with the same.

I have some issues, which I'll talk about in  a later blog topic. These issues have caused people to treat me with diminishing respect.

An ex of mine lost respect for me because I hit a rough patch with my PTSD.
She had no problem with the PTSD itself, but I was being adversely affected by stress of my living situation and horrible job.
Suddenly she went cold and just shoved me out of her life.
And, hey, that's her right.
But before that she'd been happy, we hung out and watched shows, read to each other, went on lunch dates...after...it was different. She went cold on me.

I broke down and showed weakness and she lost respect for me.

I use this as an example because someone else might not have lost respect.  They might have understood and helped.

And no, she's not a bad person for this.
She just has a different respect system than I do.

That's the point.  Respect is a system we build ourselves from input we get as kids.
Every one's respect system is different.
Mental issues add to that, and I'll touch on that later, but here I'll just say that there are conditions that cause people to have a very black and white view of things.

Respect is a very personal thing, I suppose.  Something we form as we grow.
It's something I'm interested in.
How people view and use respect in their lives.

I was taught to respect my elders.
But what if they are not niece people?  Do they still deserve respect?
Strange things that pop into my head.