Today was nonstop and I slept over 10 hours yesterday for some recovery. It was a pretty intense weekend for a few reasons but it got me to reflect on a lot of interactions in the past. I thought about a lot of relationship successes and failures. I questioned whether my approach in these situations were the best ones, even if I thought I was in the right. It’s made me realize I justified a lot of things under the excuse that I was reacting, or setting boundaries, or that my patience was tested and is finite just like everyone else’s. This might be true in some circumstances, and I’ve always tried to do the best possible at the time with the information I had, but looking back I can see where I used a hatchet instead of a scalpel. I can see where I lacked kindness. Even in anger or pain or sadness there’s a line, and instead of stopping when I made my point, sometimes I kept going because I didn’t see any point in shielding or watering down where I stood. I’ve always gone for transparency, so that’s how I viewed these actions. Regardless of situations and their catalysts, I wish I’d had more self control and showed more kindness to the people I interacted with, even if it was the last time I spoke to them (especially if it was the last time I spoke to them).
I thought a lot about redemption. I thought about my ex and the friend he raped. I realized he explored plausible deniability in a situation and knew what he was doing, but I wondered if he ever felt remorse and if it was enough to prevent him from harming someone again. I’ll never know. I thought about the people who hurt me and if they were redeemable. A couple had reached out to me in messages a while back, and I decided to reread them. I responded to them both. The first one was an apology and acknowledgement that they took away my autonomy and didn’t get consent to push for a scenario I never wanted. They took ownership, they understood I didn’t trust them and they broke our friendship. The first time they wrote to me the apology seemed very self serving and more about their own comfort. The second attempt was much better but I didn’t know how to respond. I responded the other day explaining this. I also talked about the reflections over the last weekend and how it brought me to redemption. It made me realize we are all capable of terrible mistakes, and that I hoped we were all capable of redemption, myself included. So while I admitted o struggled in differentiating a genuine offer versus one that’s deceptive, I chose to believe him, and thanked him for continuing to try to reach me and for doing the work to not perpetuate pain. He responded back and it was good.
The other message was from an ex gf who remained good friends with me for years until she became aggressively adamant about me not being serious of taking care of my health because I wouldn’t do it her way. I’ve never been into woo, or pseudo science. If it worked, it would be science. I don’t care what anyone else does as long as they don’t push it onto me and that’s what happened. We stopped talking almost four years ago when I finally pushed back on it and she sent a nasty message and ended it with it I responded she’d block me. Way to say whatever the hell you want without having the guts to see the response. I sent a pretty long response and didn’t pull any punches, not gaf whether it was read or not. So I was surprised to find a lovely message mentioning friendship this last April. Again, I didn’t know how to respond until this last weekend. I said I appreciated her reaching out and would also like friendship. I haven’t seen a response so I don’t know what that means yet, but I won’t worry about it.
I told a lot of people I love, that I love them. I don’t do that enough. I don’t know how much longer I’ll live, or how long they’ll live. There’s so much uncertainty and chaos in the world I’d rather speak up now. I reached out to a couple individuals I needed to apologize to. I never thought I’d choose actions that would be toxic, I didn’t see or own that until there was enough time and distance to observe it. I’m very sad that these interactions happened and that I reacted so poorly. I don’t know if I’ll ever hear from these people again, and either way it’s okay. I’m trying to be softer, slower to anger, more accepting. For years I’d always fear giving anyone the inkling that they could walk all over me, I prided myself on being assertive, and sometimes when I leaned into aggression I found pride in it. There is a time and place for everything, but I think I learned in too hard and too often sometimes. I want to do better, I don’t want to reflect back in a few years with so many reasons to be sorry for how I interacted with the people in my life.