Pound Pup Legacy

I was in my mid-thirties when I first started to hear the soon-to-be reoccurring theme phrase said to me by various new-found friends and strangers:  "You deserve better." 

"Deserve better"?  What does that mean?  Don't we get what we "deserve", simply by earning it, ourselves -- or are there certain allowances within our lives that say we deserve something?

My a.dad always told me "nothing in life is free... anything worth having requires a lot of hard work", so I worked my butt off to please others, never thinking personal happiness and peace of mind was the goal for me to reach.  My goals had to reach other needs, and these needs were placed well beyond me by other people.  People who "knew better".... better than what or whom, I've stopped trying to figure out!  All I know is I kept living a life that was conditioned to accept the crumbs of approval as if they should serve as the feasting banquet that was going to make me feel full and happy.

I learned very early-on that misery doesn't like company, it needs it -- so most of my relationships in my past have been rooted in a breeding-ground littered by misery, all members needing a tremendous amount of nurturing care that just wasn't there to make any great improvements.  I suppose I was seen as the chosen-one to make things better in ways I couldn't understand at the time.... but I knew it was my role to mother and comfort those in need of a soft-shoulder, showing it was safe to cry and complain to a third-party.   I was a child thrown into adult relationships and situations that had to be solved, and that was that... miserable or not.  It was the expectation of others that my mere presence was important, enough to serve a purpose -- not matter how selfish the unspoken promise made by another would make my own personal situation.  Happiness has always been relative, none of those relative factors being mine in any shape or form!

Looking back, I know what I deserved, but these are things I never got.

I deserved better parents, with far less dysfunctions... but that was not my choice... it was an agent's.  I deserved better options, but they were never offered;  I took what I could get, and let that be enough.  Did I ever deserve to be happy?  I still don't know... it's something I have to find for myself.  I do know I deserve not to be used and abused anymore, and I deserve the opportunity to find goodness in my world.  Maybe those are enough baby-steps to get me out of The Abyss I call Home.