My last two posts were full of anger and sadness, and I think it's time to clear out that negativity. I removed those posts because spreading my anger and grief helps no one, not even me. It only makes the world that much darker. I've changed them to drafts and they'll stay there as a reminder to me. This post will be uplifting (sort of). I have a wise friend, M. He's always tried to help me. The following section is an interview/conversation we had for the purpose of this post (and for my sake, too).
M: When we care about some one and they do something to hurt us, it cuts deeply. The more we care about the person, the more it effects us. We can brew a lot of negativity this way, and that negativity is unhealthy. It can make us physically ill and disrupt our daily lives. We need to clear the air.
Me: It's hard because I'm still so angry right now.
M: You need to explore those feelings in order to let go of them. State them simply and honestly. Be very clear and direct.
Me: She says I always make her the bad guy. But I feel like that she always says that to make me feel guilty for being angry. I feel that she says things with the intent of inflicting pain. Maybe she's being honest. Whether or not she means what she says, she succeeds in making me feel angry, hated, and depressed. I understand that she is upset. I feel that most of it is her own doing. I have seen it with others. She works things up in her mind during the silence and the pauses and - instead of using the time to calm down and think objectively - she allows her anger to fester, posting things where she knows the other will see them and then deleting them when she's sure they have. This keeps them from calming down and moving on. With the exception of today, I haven't done that. But today, I just had to get it off my chest.
M: Let's think of it from her view - or try to. From all the messages you took a screenshot of for me, I can see the exact point where she starts to get touchy. You didn't pick up on the defensive cues, but they were there. Clearly something else has been bugging her that you didn't take into consideration.
Me: There is a guy. But I don't think that gives her the right to be such a jerk.
M: No, and it went on. She seems to have mistaken the pause where you were typing out an explanation of what she asked, for you being annoyed. This clearly put her in defense mode. Then when the accidental message was sent, that's where the conflict started. She probably felt attacked and like you were losing patience. She then leaped to the attack, which upset you and you lost your temper.
Me: I just feel so sick of always having to pick up on every little cue just so that she won't jump to conclusions. Sometimes accidents happen like that. Sometimes things slip through the cracks and she takes it the wrong way. I'm just tired of her immediately jumping on me and beating me down, then acting like it's my fault that she misunderstood.
M: Have you told her this?
Me: Many, many, many times.
M: Then there is nothing you can do but let it go. Take a deep breath. Imagine this conflict as a stone cube. Tear away a chunk of your anger. Inhale. Ball up the chunk of anger. Exhale. Inhale and let it go on the exhale. Imagine it floating up into the sky and disappearing from view beyond the atmosphere. Let's move on to the next.
Me: She keeps posting things everywhere I go. In my feed, on other site statuses. She keeps saying how I'm inconsiderate, a bad friend, how I don't care about her emotions. This not only stabs me deep because of how tirelessly I work to act like normal people, to pretend to feel the same emotions but also because she knows what I am. But she doesn't care. She doesn't care in the sense that she always thinks of how a situation effects her and how she feels. I doubt she's thinking of my point of view and what I might be going through. She just goes through her life doing and saying what she wants, and when there's a conflict, she throws a huge tantrum. She only apologizes when she feels like it, and never means it. And when she apologizes, I've noticed (but ignored) that she'll slip passive aggressive things in there to make me feel bad - one last jab. Like "I'm sorry that I'm horrible. I'll work harder on concealing my emotions and pretending that I'm okay even when I'm not." That's not an apology. That's a slap in the face. But I let it go because for some reason, I just want to be friends again.
M: You're feeling resentment because you feel she's being passive aggressive and that she seeks to "accidentally" hurt you while seeming to vent. Then when she apologizes, she doesn't mean it and seeks to keep throwing barbs at you while vowing to close herself off in some sort of silent punishment to both you and her.
Me: Exactly.
M: Her possible side of this is that she just wants the fight to be over too, but she's still upset.
Me: Then she should just say that. She could just say that she wants to let things go back to normal while we heal. That we should speak again and try to repair the damage, rather than all these negative and thinly veiled attempts at making me hurt.
M: It's possible that she's human, like everyone. She makes mistakes and when she's hurt she seeks to hurt back. If she feels she's not getting anything from you - negative or otherwise (you do keep distance when you're mad), she could be seeking to provoke some reaction to feel like you still care one way or the other.
Me: It still sucks.
M: Consider that your distance could be hurting her. Take a deep breath and hold it. Think of this frustration and lack of communication. Exhale. Take half of that cube and ball it up. Ball up your resentment. Pack it up tightly and coil your body inward. Pull it tight until you feel you can't make yourself any more compact. Take a deep breath in through your nose, hold it and count to five. Now, slowly exhale through your mouth as you allow your body to loosen and expand, imagining the ball floating upward and disappearing as the first. And now the last.
Me: She keeps saying that she gives up. That she's done. That I win. I don't think there's winning in an argument. Everyone is hurt and everyone loses. There is no winning. But what hurts most - more than anything that's happened - is that she gives up. It's only been five hours. I've been trying to calm down and she gave me less than five hours before she was ready to write our whole friendship off and everything we've been through over her thinking that message was meant for her. It wasn't even a negative message! To anyone! She just took it that way, snapped at me, I snapped back, and then that was apparently all it took to destroy a relationship. I felt like she was my sister and this is how it ends? She's done? Just like that? She wouldn't even give me twenty-four hours to get my head on straight. Not even a day.
M: As you've said, silence makes it worse for her. Where you're not communicating, it's snowballing. It's possible that five hours of silence from you made this problem colossal and that's what destroyed it. Not the pebble, but a great boulder.
Me: So we're not friends anymore?
M: If she's made up her mind, there's nothing you can do. If she throws away a friendship over a misunderstanding and lack of communication while you calm down, perhaps she didn't value it as much as you did. Perhaps while you saw her as a sister, she saw you as less than that. To you, this relationship was strong. But if she can give it up, to her it didn't matter. If it's one-sided, then it wasn't healthy. Give it a bit more time. If she wants to talk, she will. If she doesn't, you have your answer.
Me: What do I do with the last piece?
M: Smash it. Find a pillow and swing away until you can't anymore. You have to sometimes just punch the pain out. Guys punch each other. (I'm not condoning violence. That's just what guys do. They beat each other up and then they're friends again.) You punch a pillow. And remember to breathe. What will happen, will happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment