I did a little work on the book today – yay for me, three 3 weeks in a row of keeping my resolution to write! I was working on a chapter, with aforementioned title above, about my struggles with the damage my mental health and my lack of addressing it has had on some of my relationships, one relationship in particular (I don’t, and am not, divulging the nature of that relationship for ‘reasons’.) I’m trying to talk myself through the – “what do I do about those relationships now” part of things. Below is an excerpt from the draft that I particularly liked and wanted to share. Enjoy!
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… once you make […] whatever attempts you can at making amends, you get to let it go. We DO NOT have responsibility for or ownership of other people’s thoughts, actions, emotions, or reactions to things. And other people are under no obligation to accept our olive branches or to choose to continue to deal with us and our illnesses. But that is something that THEY own, not us. Put out there into the world what you can and don’t beat yourself up if they can’t, or won’t, take what you give – just move on. I think this is one of the most kind, and cathartic, things we can do for ourselves.
But I think it’s also important to believe that not only do you not owe them your guilt or endless attempts to reconcile, you don’t owe them anything else either. It drives me crazy that we’re always supposed to take the “high road.” That regardless of how people treat you or others, despite what they give or don’t give to you, you’re always supposed to give back anything they ask for. You need support and understanding, and they won’t give it, but they think they have a right to continue to demand your respect, to demand your time, even to demand your love. And maybe you truly think they deserve those things even if they can’t support you, but that needs to be because you want to give it – they don’t get to demand a damned thing from you.
And DO NOT fall for the whole, “You owe it to me for what you put me through” or “you owe it to me for all I’ve done for you in the past” or maybe even worse the “you owe it to me simply because I’m your sibling/ parent/ grandparent/ best friend/ etc..” That. Is. Bullshit. Relationships may be like a bank, where the ‘deposits’ you put in through the years add up so you can cash in on them later when you need to, emotional capital is a real thing. BUT, and this is the important part – if that person turns around and takes all their ‘money’ out of the bank but still expects you to keep writing checks, you don’t have to fucking do that.
And who knows? Maybe eventually I’ll even take my own advice and move on from my own battles with this particular issue. Though let’s be honest, probably not.
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