Today I read a status of someone who told another she did not know exactly what she was thinking. The person, she said, was grateful for her honesty and forthrightness.
In reading it, it made me think of "A." It reminded me of how when he decided things were over, he tried to silence my expression. While it is different, and while I did write him several emails as I processed things, It got me thinking about the power of being able to communicate.
It got me thinking about who we communicate for. Did I need to send him all the those emails? I wanted to be heard. I was writing them, hoping he would hear me. There would have been no point in writing them, if he wasn't the recipient. It wasn't enough for me to just write them. I wanted him to know what and how I felt. However he chose to deal with them, was up to him. At least I expressed myself. And he would not have had a choice about what to do regarding the messages they included, had I not sent them.
At one point he tried to stifle me by saying that we handle things differently, and that I was just upsetting him by expressing myself as much as I had. At that point if I remember right, he said we would talk, so I let up. But it took awhile to happen. It was possibly just his way of shutting me up.
I realize it can be overwhelming for someone who isn't expressive to interact with someone who is. If he had just been willing to talk to me from the start, I might not have felt so pressed to go the route I did. The less willing he was to speak to me, the more I felt a need to say what was on my mind.
Now, months later, I still send him a revealing message from time to time. I have no expectation that he will respond. I recently wrote him,
"exhausted...but having trouble sleeping...feeling kind of scared...so much on my mind...a part of me thinks you don't care - given how you have been. Another part recognizes that may not be the case at all and yet another part thinks you don't deserve to know how much you still mean to it...but I guess nothing currently compares to what you were able to give me...what an incredible gift it was while it lasted. I don't care if you respond, and certainly don't expect you to...this message is selfishly motivated...i just felt the need to express what I am feeling...maybe I can try to sleep now with one less prompting in my head...thank you for giving me a reason to love you as much as i did."
There was a lot of freedom in sending him that. I did it, and then I was able to sleep. I meant what I said, and it helped me to release it for the night. I am not sure expression changes the way I feel, but it at least allows me to be me.
I have no control over how another person will react to me and what I say, but I do have control over whether or not I express myself in the first place. As people we do others an incredible disservice by not respecting what they have to say because we don't like it or don't want to hear it.
And as I say this, I think about all the things I do not want to hear and about how difficult it is for me to hear things when I am suffering and overwhelmed. Maybe that is how "A" was feeling. But as I also think about it, I think I can make a distinction between the two similar, yet seemingly different, circumstances.
In the case of "A" I would like to think that what I was doing was expressing how I felt about what had transpired. I would like to think that while I was expressing what I felt it included him, but not in a finger-pointing, blaming way, but more in a way of expressing how I was feeling as a result of all that was - which coukdn't help but include him. After all, I would not have felt the way I did, had he not dome what he did. I did not tell him he was wrong, or that he needed to change. I would like to think I did a good job at that. The unfortunate thing is that even if I sucked at it, and even if he took something in an unintended way, I had no hope of resolving it because he would not talk to me.
While I would like to think I am fairly good at this these days, I am not perfect, and things may come out in an unintended way, or intended, but not necessarily the best choice of words or message. Plus I cannot be responsible for how another person hears what I say, but I can be responsible for doing what I can to communicate differently, if I know there is a misfiring in the initial communication, But I need the other person's engagement for that.
In many cases - especially in the last year - when someone tells me how they feel, but it is only about them to the degree that how who I am and how I am bothers them, and how wrong I am for seeing things as I do, I think it is different than what I described with "A."
I don't want to hear how someone else thinks I should do things - unless I ask. Someone told me recently that I don't listen. I am trying to figure out as I write what the person thinks I wasn't hearing. Maybe there was some intention behind what was said that I was missing while I was interacting with what I think she was saying.
The thing is I look at things differently than others do. I so often have. Most of my life, I have been on the outside, looking in. I can not seem to help it, and I am tired of being judged in some way wrong or inferior for it. I may not be the best woman to ever walk this planet, but I have a good heart and I am doing the best I can - just like many others.
I suspect there are others like me who have settled and conformed in some way because it may seem to be easier. But at what cost? Yes, it hurts when people not only don't get me but then give me grief for what they think they get. But at least I still get to be me. I think if I was to deny myself it would hurt more. I spent years fighting who I am thinking there was something wrong with me. I am now thinking that the only thing "wrong" with me is that I haven't been how someone else wanted me to be, or thought I should be.
Some might say, given my circumstances, something must indeed be wrong with me. And the less tactful, more reactional part of me would want to say, "go to hell!" The more calm, reasonably aware part of me looks at it and says it is Ok that they think that. We all have things we label as "right" or "wrong" when in actuality they may just be how they are supposed to be. I don't have to make myself miserable over someone else's label or intrepretation, and just because I feel stymied or stuck or unhappy does not mean that this situation isn't somehow exactly the way it needs to be.
And then there are times I might just want to tell that reasonably aware part of me to go to hell, too. :p
This Game of Life that we play certainly can suck sometimes, but given the myriad of variables, I have a sneaking suspicion that there are times when making up - and more importantly playing by - our own rules lands us exactly where we need to be. The thing is, though, sometimes we may land flat on our back, even though we would haved liked to be like a cat and land on our feet.
But either way - we landed. And it isn't so much how we landed, as much as it is about what we do next. And don't forget the fact that we are even able enough to have a next move.
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