You know who you are. You’re someone who I used to call “friend.” You were his friend, or family, first, but we were friends too, weren’t we?

I made a mistake, though. I reached out to you in frustration and vented too much. I said things that weren’t nice. It’s not my usual style. I regretted it immediately. I tried to take the message back. I apologized for crossing the line.

But after sharing those messages or screenshots of them, you didn’t also share the apology, did you? What was your objective? Do you know the whole story? Or maybe you know more than I do? And why did he need to tell me? What was the point in that? He told me my messages to them caused him some damage, but that he understood and it was OK. Well, I wasn’t exactly looking for his blessing.

What’s my point in writing this? If you haven’t already figured this out, I tend to overshare and work out what I’m feeling and thinking right here on this blog. Maybe you took advantage of that. I also knew that it was a possibility that he would see what I wrote not because he sought it out, but because someone would pass it along. And I was fine with that. I hoped for that.

What did I learn today? I learned that I’m not allowed to be anything other than gentle, kind, and forgiving. I’m supposed to go with the flow, all the time. Am I not allowed to be angry? To be human? For so long people have encouraged me, pushed me, to assert myself, to speak up. Maybe my mistake was that I wasn’t direct enough. But I did try the direct approach, and the questions in my letters, letters expressing my anger, my frustration, my fears, my sadness, went unanswered. The silence continued until I reached out with an olive branch, when I sounded more like my old self. I didn’t get any answers to my questions though, not right away. It took a phone call, at last, clearing the air, and me pushing until I got the honesty, and the closure, I was looking for. I was able to make him see how he made a fool out of me: I drove away from my home, defending him and our split to all, thinking one thing when the reality was so different. He apologized for that. He didn’t want to hurt me, he said, but the lies hurt more than the truth.

So is the lesson that you don’t get what you want until you play nice? A case of attracting more flies with honey than with vinegar? Not sure I like that lesson if that’s the case. Doesn’t make me think I can continue to assert myself.

I’ve made my peace. One day, I’ll be able to look back without crying. It will be all right. I will be all right. I’m on my way there now.

And you? Well, I guess we weren’t really friends after all.