I’m starting to dread the A.M. hours.
I’m exhausted but I can barely sleep, because the night asks all the worst questions and at the end there’s no hiding from yourself.
It’s ridiculous, when I look back and trace my steps, look at the handful of words exchanged and the storm I’ve let everything grow into in my mind.But that’s the punchline, isn’t it? You don’t really get to choose how things affect you in the moment, and once they do you’ve just got to live with it.
And really, it’s years of accumulated pain. Thousands of little scrapes and scars, skin healing over the shrapnel of words left unspoken.
I’ve been avoiding this for years, and I think I’d convinced myself it wasn’t real, it’d never happen. That somehow things would get better, that we’d all change, that the little fights that play themselves out over years would somehow go away.
But I guess in the end we are who we are, huh?
…
It’s driving me crazy, how difficult it is to just talk to these people, my friends. How lightly we have to tread around anything real, how unimaginable direct confrontation is, how massive the barriers are.
We all act like friends, but there’s something deeply broken there. And I hate it.
It’s the sound of fear, that silence. Fear wallowing and screaming and laughing. Fear of saying the wrong thing, of saying something honest and being rejected, of exposing yourself and getting hurt.
But it’s what they want.
There’s two answers to that kind of fear - one is to hide from what could hurt you, and one is to confront it.
What can I say. Confrontation was always my first choice. It’s never as simple as that, I know. Not everything can be immediately faced, real change is gradual, and it can take a long time to work through all the obstacles that fear creates in your mind.
Which is what makes it so easy to keep making excuses to keep hiding.
I spent so long trying to handle these, my friends, through confrontation. By talking when I was hurt, and expecting them to talk to me when they were. I spoke my mind and didn’t feel guilty about it as long as I listened when others would.
But there’s no greater sin than sounding confident when other people are afraid. There’s nothing that’ll make you a bigger target than trying to rock the boat.
And boy oh boy have I ever caught hell for it over the years. Eventually it came to the choice, give in or get out. So I gave in. Every now and then I’d get upset and cut contact for a few months, but I knew I’d come back eventually.
I tried to be more conciliatory. I’d go over everything I said before going to sleep that night, and fret about who I might have offended and if I should apologize before they start carrying a grudge they’ll never tell me about.
…
I mean, this all seemed right to me. This seemed like self-improvement, like I’d finally started figuring out how to work with people. Like everything was all my fault by default and the more willing I was to accept blame the better things would be.
Blame my father and my fears of being just like him, and the times I was.
It’s not all bad, anyway. There’s a balance to be struck. There’s value in being aware of how you could affect other people.
But for the love of fucking god am I so sick of being the one to have to drag everyone into a conversation to start talking about what’s wrong. For the love of fucking god am I so over being ambushed by everyone else’s problems.
I just want to know why it’s so difficult for people to talk to me. Or each other, I guess.
We’re all so trapped in our own little bubbles, how can we help but hurt each other when we try to get close?
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