Brick Walls

It hurts to be misunderstood. Especially, when you realize someone seems to believe and see only the shadow, dark side of you—the repressed stuff that you’ve done your damnedest to allow space for.

Sometimes its tough when the sledgehammering most obviously misses the mark entirely. When it triggers the old wound, charging it once again with invisibility.  

I know you will not respect my request to not be contacted and so you will try to contact me via false emails and such and I will warn you now, you will be blocked.

Yes, that is absolutely who I am in some sort of counterfactual world.

I guess my naivete is jumping up and down on me. I'm no rocket surgeon, but I gather that this is something people apparently do to one another, in your counterfactual world. 

I see that people have slung such arrows like this at you in the past. Or perhaps, this is something, you've done to people. Ok. I’m really sorry people did that to you. I’m sorry they hurt you in so many ways. I’m sorry for the pain they and I caused you.

And here is the weird truth of the matter, I actually felt safe with you. Expressing things I haven’t to many people at all. I realize now, it was too much for you to handle and I’m sorry. You did take it personally. I knew that with certainty when you claimed, that you absolutely did not.

This is not personal. I see who you really are.

No, you don’t at all.

Apparently, I'm invisible to you. You do not see the real me. Because, you missed some significant factors. Like the fact that it has never even occurred to me to do the things you are so worried I will now do. Wow. Even the power of suggestion or projection is not enough to compel me to behave in such ways. I can't believe that after all of this, you still don’t actually know the most basic premise of who I am.  

And that, kind of hurts. This does feel remarkably similar to that which I am trying to heal.  

But, not at all for the reasons you might suppose.

And, no, I’m not actually that girl that you clearly think me to be.

I am inclined to speak with you, only because of the denied opportunity to close things off with the sort of respect human beings ought give one another. I respect your need to end things. I have no intentions of persuading you otherwise. I just don’t understand not allowing space for humanity in the process. Isn't that what you've taught me the narcissist does? The human being part of me that reaches toward peace wishes to speak my piece. I do feel like contacting you—not out of some sort of frenzied desire to lash out—but in order to understand my role in all of this and to communicate the space from whence I resonate. I’d like to speak with you, in order to learn how not to repeat the mistakes I made with you. But, you don’t seem to know how to “fight” fairly--though you seemingly have always known a lot about fighting. Perhaps, that is part of the problem. You don’t seem to understand that respect for human dignity means that even when we least expect to see the other person’s perspective, we graciously give opportunity for the other to try to persuade us. Instead, you brick walled off in your unclaimed pain and never offered the chance to respond to your words, to have the other half of the conversation as human beings ought to do for one another.

You are so rigid...

Perhaps. In my so-called rigidity, I'm trying on your ideas. But, I don't believe I'm the one acting like a brick wall, here. This is your emotional cut-off tactic. Any human being would feel inclined to want to respond, to defend, to explain—but you abruptly slammed the door on such and projected out the idea that in wanting to respond to such, one would necessarily need to see oneself as victim. And that is not necessarily the case. One might need to respond not to claim victim-hood but rather in order to be a human being. To understand, to clear the air, to see the whole, to not be rigid, to learn from one's mistakes. 

But, in keeping with your request, as I'm re-framing it. I shall not respond to this. I shall treat you with respect.  

I shall endeavor to take you at your word. Perhaps, no one ever really has in the past and so you don't know what that feels like. I shall respect your request to be left alone. It is all I can do. And because, as human beings, who actually respect each other, that is what we ought aim to do for one another. I am sorry for your pain. I even wish that I could heal it.

But, I cannot.