Adventures in Parque Mexico

Pray or Prey

A personal motto of mine is that we are often the architects of our own misery and joy. Life gives us things we cannot control and things we can. For what we can, we often make choices with what we have and live out the consequences, good, bad, or more often something between them. It wasn’t until a faithful encounter in Parque Mexico that I truly began to understand what it means to be an active architect in your own life.

While I have been practicing showing up authentically in my day-to-day life for the last few years, becoming a nomad in Mexico City accelerated this way of being. No one knew me, so I was free to be quirky, quiet, reserved, energetic, social, and adventurous — essentially embodying everything that made me, me. All the parts of me that were contradictions but also fit perfectly within each other. I could let myself be open to all that life wanted to give me.

One evening, in Parque Mexico, I met a woman who became a mirror to that ask. Throughout my time in the city, I had been extremely open to sharing myself with the new people I had been meeting and when I met Anne (pseudonym) the dance followed. We shared stories and bared our souls; however, unbeknownst to me my vulnerability and transparency became a vehicle for her to prey on me. They became levers for her to pull on to get me to perform and maneuver in ways that would be to her liking.

I quickly realized that I was being manipulated. Manipulation is horrible. It warps our perception of the world around us and is predicated on the fact, that sometimes, someone we trust or have given our trust to, has chosen to disregard that, to meet their own needs. It struck a nerve. This was the exact thing that I have feared my entire life. It hurt. I left. I made a choice at that moment to no longer allow myself to be a pawn in someone else’s story about me. I didn’t choose to revert back to hiding myself. No, I realized that this person was not worthy of seeing me fully. They hadn’t even made an attempt to. Innocuous at first, I did not think Anne would be the source of a lesson on discernment.

In the past, when I have gotten hurt or felt like I would get hurt, I have built walls; they allowed me to feel like I had some control over whatever was happening to me. My wall always made me feel safe but rarely made me feel seen. In what could be the product of growth, the thought to build a wall around me never crossed my mind. Instead, I chose to lean into my intuition that this was a lesson — a data point; sometimes we attract people who aren’t the best for us. But those people, no matter how they enter, don’t have to stay. We aren’t trapped with them; I found that if we firmly shut our doors to them, they will stop wandering outside and find somewhere or someone else to loiter around. Discernment allows us to choose who we let in to experience us and those that we leave outside.

Let us all find more people who pray for us, instead of preying on us.