Happy end of this post rant. Are you happy we got here, finally? Me too. I’m going to keep this one pretty brief. What did I say I was going to do in the beginning of all of this? Oh right, a solution. LOL. A solution?! I don’t have a solution.
The End.
Just kidding, sort of. I don’t really have a solution, but I’ve been working on this, and so, I feel like I can share that part with you. I can tell you how I’ve responded to each of the situations I’ve described and I can share how I think I’m going to try and navigate going forward.
There’s one universal fact that I’ve run into over my years on this planet, being harmed. Even though people seem to not give a shit whilst they are being manipulative or justifying their hurtful behavior or insulting you or ignoring you. They do. They care very much. The problem is, they may not care about you. They may just care deeply about themselves and how they are perceived.
I cannot tell you how many friendships that people have repaired with me for the sake of the friendship or their own reputation and not for my sake. When I say that they are fixing things for the sake of the friendship, I don’t even mean that they deeply value our friendship. I wish I meant that, but that is not where I’m coming from at all. I mean that they are deeply committed to the idea of being a good friend (in theory, not actuality) and they don’t like the idea of the friendship falling apart because it may intimate that they’ve done something wrong. And there is no room for such things.
As for their own reputation, that bit is pretty self-explanatory. They are a good person and a great friend and they always make things better when shit has gotten hairy, so how could they possibly offend someone to the point of ruining a friendship? That’s lunacy. Best to fake fix things as quickly as possible to right the ship.
Yay. Said no one ever.
Now, perhaps you might be thinking (and I’ve been there), it doesn’t matter what it takes to get someone back into my life and good graces. At the end of the day, all I really care about is that things are good again. And so, you are willing to accept things as they are, no matter what. The problem there is that you will continue to feel shitty, but you will bury it, and you will likely run into the same issues in the friendship over and over again. That will take a toll, on you, and certainly on the friendship. You will be slowly destroying the thing that you are intent on saving or preserving. Sigh. What a mess.
How do you know what someone’s intentions are? Well, there are signs. There is the way in which they communicate, how they own what they’ve done, how they approach the discussion with you. They don’t need to fall on a sword and apologize left and right, but there should be some acknowledgment and thoughtful consideration. Without that, you are probably looking at some artificial rendering of a relationship.
Whether a relationship fixes or not, how do you move forward? Well, with integrity. Cool. Thanks. That makes things super easy to navigate. No, I know it doesn’t, but it’s the truth. You stay true to who you are, and you know that by asking yourself who you are and what you need. You revisit that truth over and over again because guess what? We change from time to time and so do our needs. You also find strategies for working through the stress of whatever the conflict looks like. Manipulation? Call it out for what it is so you can’t be fooled by it. Bounce it off a friend to make sure you are seeing things clearly. Hell, tell it to a few people so if you try and go back, they tell you that you’re insane.
Justification? You don’t have to be combative. At all. Just tell yourself that you have reached an insurmountable mountain. They believe, unequivocally that they are right, and you believe you are right and there is no meeting in the middle. There is sadness, but that happens, and sadness is easier to heal from, so get to it. You can let them feel that justification hard and not find your way to that side of the fence. No one is forcing you to agree, so don’t. It’s fine. That doesn’t make you difficult or stubborn or anything of the sort. You are allowed to believe that their reasoning just isn’t good enough. It’s okay. I promise.
Insults. Tell yourself that you don’t need to take it and by it, I mean them. You don’t need to engage in a back and forth. Don’t use your feelings and turn them on yourself where you end up feeling that way about you. Rather, just let the insult sit out there. I recently said to someone, I’m sorry you feel that way about me. I know I am working on myself and I’m far from perfect, but I don’t want to be friends with someone who sees me that way. It was so fucking liberating. I was super sad, but also, free. Try to take it seriously in that you use that interaction to move away from that person, but not personally in that you believe the shit they are spewing.
Silence. Like I said, this one undoes me. When I seek to fill the silence with my babbling, I write. Sometimes it’s a whole essay or a blog post. Sometimes, it’s a note to myself on my iPhone. Literally. I really want to write to ______ right now, but I’m not, because I know it won’t serve me. I know we will end up where we are now and I will feel doubly shitty because I engaged. And so, I am going to sit in the discomfort of not responding. It will get better each day that passes. I will heal, but I need time. Everything worth something in life takes time.
Same advice I’ve given a million times but it’s gold. Read a book. Take a walk. Drink some coffee. Scream into a pillow. Call a friend. Eat some peanut butter. Find a way to make your heart happy and know that the tears scar over in time. They make you more resilient, but only if you let them fully heal. Time.
X
L.
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