Spiteful

I sat down the last three days in a row to write.  Ended up scraping or erasing everything I wrote.  Some days I feel compelled yet uninspired to write. There are days that the words spill out of me, but collectively it amounts to nothing more than drivel. Today, I sat down to write, and it ended up being a letter that would probably not be sent.

Wearing only my heart on my sleeve isn't something I have experienced. I wear every single emotion on my sleeve.  My hurt, my love, my joy and happiness, my pain and discontentment. I wear my pride, disappointment, envy, desire and regret a little too close to my collar.  Those emotions and feelings seem to sneak up on me and threaten to weigh me down at times. Sometimes, they pile up on my chest and compress any air I have left out of me. Other times, they form hands that strangle and hold on for too long around my neck. Restriction is how I have started thinking about it.  When my heart hurts and my throat feels tight and my chest faces collapse, I often just flee rather than face the emotions head on.  Fleeing to me is obvious avoidance.  Sometimes avoidance is self preservation. Other times, my avoidance is to preserve the other person.

My heart has been hurting for some time now over a situation that hasn't remedied itself.  I care for the other person, will never walk away from them and can not see a day when they will not be in my life in some way, shape or form.  Usually, when I sit down to write about relationships, heart hurts and joy, my feelings about a person or a situation change. Often, I am able to forgive and move forward after something that has hurt me just by writing about the situation from my perspective. I work through what I am feeling and quickly discard anything that is not true or obviously inflated from my rash decisions or snarky comebacks.

I haven't been able to write about this.  And after spending time in much prayer on my own and then the other night with my friend Katie, not only do I feel that my feelings are valid, I held my tongue, didn't say anything that I should seek forgiveness for and didn't act upon my feelings in a negative manner. But then I realized that I was also holding a grudge, avoiding and justifying my actions while completely placing all the blame on the other person.  And then, the realization that I was in this all alone. The other person is completely unaware of what I am thinking and how I feel.  I did this to myself.

Self sabotage is a real thing. A relationship is working, working well, and then you think or believe something that isn't true and it slowly begins to crumble. I did this.  It is all about what my expectations were. If I never voiced my hopes and expectations, how can I possibly hold the other person accountable when I think they have failed me? Any rational person will tell you that this line of thinking will lead you down rabbit hole after rabbit hole.  Obviously, I haven't been rational.

So here I am 6 months out, and I have finally realized, I have made this all about me. I have placed my comfort, my wishes, my desire for happiness and contentment before the other person.  Why is what I want more important?  Aren't all relationships about give and take and sometimes giving a whole lot more?  Self centered and selfish and spiteful are apparently characteristics I have mastered.  And mastery of any of those characteristics aren't something I want to share with others.

I need to fix this.  It is the only way.  If I want to feel better about this, if I want to mend this relationship, I need to be honest.  I need to state that I had unvoiced expectations that were not met and I now realize that I had withdrawn my friendship because of it.  I need to talk about how I now realize that I placed my own comfort ahead of theirs. But mostly, I need to apologize and ask for forgiveness.  I need to humble myself. I need to leave any and all spitefulness behind me.

Tonight, I will take the first step in relationship repair. I will send a text message and say hello. If it is received well, I will suggest a phone call maybe this weekend. But I will take that first step.  There is no longer room for spitefulness in my life. My collar has been too tight for too long.