I loved frayed jeans during adolescence.  I still keep a couple of pair as a wardrobe staple.  But today I looked over at them and realized if I could paint a picture of how I feel inside at this moment, that’s exactly what it would look like.  Hanging by a thread; torn apart in places that serve as a reminder it’s not whole over here.  It’s a nasty feeling, one that’s accompanied by anxiety and hurt.  Last night I issued a nasty and unclassy tirade to an individual I thought deserved every bit of it.  Here’s the funny thing about that:  it feels good for a bit, but then you have to look at yourself in the mirror and ask, “is this who I want to be?”  And that answer was slow coming and very painful, but no.  That’s not the person I want to be.  But that’s what happens when things build up.  Like the frayed jeans, life and people can wear you down if you let them until one day you look over and you are exposed and the wound is palpable.

There’s never an excuse to lose your cool.  Or, let me rephrase that, I have spent years trying to better myself to handle situations without losing my cool.  And these things, they don’t happen overnight.  It wasn’t that I suddenly snapped.  It’s been coming for months.  Toxicity festers and grows if not handled early on.  And I can look back and see a hundred times I should have set boundaries and said, “I refuse to allow this–you’re starting to fray my soul and that’s unacceptable in my life.”  But I didn’t.  So who was that tirade REALLY about?  Me.  I think the answer is me.  No one is perfect but I could have had a backbone long before it came to the point of being downright nasty.  Maybe.  Some people have a hard time listening unless it cuts them deep.  So maybe I’m wrong.  Still, I don’t like giving myself excuses for bad behavior.  It encourages more of the same.  And I have to sleep at night with what I do, not what someone else does.

But, I can’t beat myself up for too long.  I have too much uncertainty and stress going on to spin even further out of control.  Isn’t there a saying about holding onto anger being like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt the other person? [Google update: “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”-Buddha] It’s just time to forgive.  Forgive the wrongs of others and forgive myself for acting like a wounded animal in fight or flight mode.  It’s possible that we both just did the best we could with what we had.  It’s even possible on some level that in an effort to love we just tried too hard and refused to give up when we should have called it a done deal much, much sooner.  In fact, while there’s a ton of doubt, I truly believe deep down we tried too hard.  We tried so hard that our individual issues became a source of pain onto the other.  And both of us had so much other stuff going on that stopping long enough to get to the root of the problem wasn’t possible.  And now, the water is very, very muddy.  Spewing more shit into it, didn’t help.  But we did that together.  A joint effort of not protecting a good thing and letting the toxins creep in without ever stopping to clean it up.  And then thinking we could drink from it!!  😦

I want to put good out in the world and get good back.  I’m sorry for contributing to the negative.  Frayed jeans are ok; they definitely have their place.  Hey, maybe I just need to get some breathing room in these wounds so they can heal.  I’m not one that’s good at hiding anyway.  I’d rather be real, open, and honest and take my chances than be someone I’m not.  I want to do better, be better, pass better onto this world.  I have a lot to offer.  I have a lot of growing and learning.  If I am lucky, I have a great many number of years to do that.  I mean at 36 years old, I should have some stuff figured out, but I don’t.  What keeps me going and trying to do better is that feeling that there’s a higher power working it out.  I need to cling to two thoughts: ‘be anxious for nothing” and “be still and know that I am.”  When I forget these things–when we get so busy and caught up in that dirty water–we make mistakes.  We feel we have no power, no control.  The hurt is intense.  And there’s no room for light and love anymore.

So to anyone I may have hurt:  I am sorry.  To myself for hurting so much and not dealing with it responsibly:  I’m sorry.  I read my last post and I can instantly see that I had a lot of issues I should have stepped up and dealt with before it came to an explosion.  I will strive to do better.  I want to have a little grace in my step and hold my head high.  The good news is that I have done that far longer and more often than not in my life.  Too much happiness, friendships, achievements, and given a lot of love over 36 years to let a bad, bad year mess it all up.  So maybe I just needed a reminder.  Maybe I needed a personal inventory of what’s wrong and what’s right.  Like Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.”