There is one thing I’ll never understand about some people who cut me out of their lives. I don’t operate the same way as them with the people I love.
It’s those who can’t work up the courage to say “you’re asking too much of me, please give me space. I don’t enjoy seeing you in pain and your frustration is hurting me too. I don’t like how you treat me.” Any direct communication would be good. Tell me to fuck off.
When I’m met instead with silence, I don’t fill the gaps with a firm but fair warning. I fill the vacuum with poison, hate, and assumptions. Some people do tell it to me straight. It still hurts, yes, but I don’t wonder as much.
A lot of people prefer to hide. They ignore me until I turn my anger towards them. That’s what usually seals it, because then I demand they leave to get it over with. I’ve been told that’s not so great to hear.
No one likes to be yelled at. I’ll learn that lesson some day soon, I hope. Maybe then it will leave more space for those friends who otherwise showed me so much patient love to be heard.
Friends won’t always know how to soothe me. I must reckon with that and I must learn to do so myself. It should never get to a point that a friend feels so overwhelmed they have to avoid me. That’s just so awful. For that I am truly sorry.
There. There’s my hard lesson to bring to next year. I only lost a best friend and a highly trusted mentor this year. Not so bad, right?
