136 - fire
there's a kind of emotional work required in friendships that just kicks the shit out of me sometimes, and i fear this maybe makes me a bad person.
its the showing up, when things get awkward and difficult. you fucked up, and now you have to accept that. the apologising is easy - at the end of the day, that's just words. we do that all the time. 'sorry' is so involuntary that most of us say it as a gut response as soon as anything goes wrong, just to be on the safe side.
accepting that it went wrong because of you, that's harder.
and accepting that you need to be the one to step back into the fire to make it better, thats even harder still.
you fucked it up, and now you have to make a choice. or a lot of choices.
if you're really lucky you have other friends, or you feel confident in going and making some. this is the sweet, meandering path, away from the heat. isn't it easier to just walk away and start fresh with someone new?
because the other path is you shut the hell up, you walk into the fire, and figure out what you have to do to make things not awkward and difficult.
the fire sucks. usually it involves shutting down your ego and your pride, and a certain amount of anxiety, and since very few things are ever black-and-white, probably some hurt of your own to get over.
after all, why aren't they fixing it? is this your fault alone? surely not. and that hill looks so comfortable to lay down and die on.
this is the choice that gets to me, complicated by additional factors like a crippling lack of self worth. am i even good enough to fix this? do i know what i'm doing? do they want me back at all, or have they already chosen one of the other options?
am i gonna get burnt for no reason?
before long, the narrative basically begs to be rewritten. you choose the path, and then convince yourself it was chosen for you. there wasn't any other options. you did the best you could, actually. the hill is so so comfortable.
perhaps you were barely friends to begin with. you only knew them for a short couple months, and you've conviniently forgotten all the reasons you became close. the reasons you cared. it wasnt what it seemed after all.
will you struggle to explain this to your other, newer friends, one day? to the people you both knew? will you talk about how they actually weren't the person you thought they were? it's blameless, really. or at least, you are.
are you buying it? you have to sell it to yourself before you can convince anyone else.
if only there was a more palatable truth. not a more pleasant one, for sure. but one that went down a little easier. even if it burns, in the process.
i'm mixing my metaphors too much now. going in circles, looping back to thoughts we thought resolved, unable to decide which problem i'm talking about.
that feels familiar too. it's all just so much work.
easier to walk away. easier to be a bad person.
i fucking hate this shit.