💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~winter › gemlog › 2023 › 11-25.gmi captured on 2024-07-09 at 01:47:34. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-05-26)
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Just saw the above skeet in my Bluesky feed and it got me thinking to a conversation I had with my therapist late last year. About what I hoped for the person who hurt me the worst, years ago. And I need to be clear, I'm not generally a grudge-holding person. If you've hurt me, it's almost certainly fine; it's in the past, I've moved on. But looking back over my life, there are two exceptions. A couple of people have really hurt me in a lasting and meaningful way. And I got thinking about the above quote in that context. Would I wish anything on them?
In my last relationship, which was long distance (but only a couple hundred miles apart), I was ghosted after several months, and several weekends spent together in each other's city. No response to voicemails, to emails or IMs. We were young, barely adults, but this hurt and confused me, and always felt like a particularly cruel thing to do, though we were still adolescents, broken in similar-but-different ways, and anyways, far from perfect. A couple of years later, they sent me an electronic apology, semi-anonymously, leaving only their name, no contact details.
i hurt you.
that's not okay.
i'm sorry.
It was far too late, but the gesture, the acknowledgement of hurt, wasn't nothing. It was decent. It was a good thing to do. The years passed and we moved on to the rest of our lives. They got in touch once more, early in the Facebook era, saying they'd heard I got married, and congratulations. I said thanks. And that was it. Neither of us reaching out since. No need to. Done.
Mmm, but before that there was someone else. We are hurt many times in our lives, but there is always someone who stands above the rest. I wish I had never met them. It would have changed me fully and completely. I could have had a much happier life.
They were my introduction to shame, and above all, to shaming. Here I am, decades removed from our time together. The face has faded, but not the voice, the shame, and what-came-after: what I barely survived, pulled back at the last minute.
(The details scant here, but not because I've forgotten; it's still bright in my memory, paragraphs written and deleted, my brain reminding me: _what if they find you?_)
What would I wish on them? Everything and nothing. Last fall, when all this became too much and I had to admit I needed help, I talked with my therapist about everything. I told her what happened to me that night, and after. And she asked me, what would you say to them? And after about ten seconds of silence to collect myself, I said I hope they realize the hurt they've caused. I hope they understand the damage. And I hope they're living a better life.
I've talked about this with one of my best friends, someone who lives a couple thousand miles from me, who I've known since 97 or 98, who I've never met, may never meet. And she asked me: _do you want support or advice? i have both and you get to pick_ I said, advice. And she told me to build up a mental list of the good I've done, things I've achieved, every time the thoughts return. And return to that list, going through them: _like a rosary_, she told me, even though she's not Catholic, even though I'm not. And so I've started doing this. It helps. I am not who I was at my worst. And, again, I hope they're not, too.