Bruised

I survived the night, as did our relationship. I probably should be old enough to know that it will, and not indulge myself in emotion and drama. But somehow, sometimes, things just… sometimes perspective fails and it’s just… universally terrible.

I’m tired. Still. I feel beaten. Like I was in an emotional car wreck, and everything is bruised and sore inside of me.

I had a good day with family. I came home and we had an okay evening…with my… with this family… My chosen family. I think we are all feeling bruised, though. All of us are kind of quiet and… introspective, I guess. It isn’t like we’re tiptoeing around each other, and a number of very emotional and ultimately, I know, healing conversations have taken place. It’s just… I think we’re all just bruised.

I’m trying, myself, to let go of some hurtful things that were said to me. They’ve been apologized for. They weren’t even terrible things. But… things said in the heat of the moment, I take as truth about myself. And that’s… The person who said them has apologized. He says they weren’t true, and he didn’t mean them. He says they came from a place of emotion and actually, most of the time, the opposite (of what he said) is true about me, so it wasn’t even a logical criticism.

But I can’t… absorb that.

And I feel like I can’t tell him, or argue with him that, no, he really was right, I really AM that way… because then he’ll just continue to feel bad about saying it. And I need to let it go, if for no other reason, than to let him get over it. So I accepted his apology, I stopped arguing or debating it with him, I let him say it wasn’t true, and I became silent.

But the whole day I’ve been working at it like a sore tooth. And now I’m even more exhausted and emotionally worn, which isn’t helpful.

And I wish I wasn’t so delicate. I wish I could just blow it off, and say, “He’s wrong, that’s not something I do…” But I can’t. I’m going back endlessly through my memories of this and all my past relationships… digging through all the ways that I failed, all the things I regret, all the things that maybe make what he said about me true.

And what if… what if… it really was just something mean to say in the heat of the moment because he was hurting and upset and it isn’t really true? What if that’s reality?

What if sometimes people just say something to be hurtful because they’re hurting?

What if… healthy people… could receive an apology and an explanation and say, “Oh, okay, it wasn’t really about me,” and then just go on with their lives… Actually, literally, let it become the past?

I don’t know what that would be like.

And I feel like I have to learn it or I will destroy my relationships.

Because I just can’t let go of hurt.