One good thought: Sometimes, we screw up.

Being unemployed with very little to do gives you a lot of time to get to know things about yourself you were too busy or too afraid to acknowledge before. Today was one of those days of realisations. If there’s one thing you need to know about me it’s that I’m a strong believer in justice. Seeing someone carry out an unjust action makes me angry, incredibly angry. Not a day goes by that I don’t read a news story, see something on the streets, or even just find myself thinking of how broken the systems of the world is, and find myself getting mad and horribly upset. I carry it all with me each day and every few weeks or months I’ll reach breaking point; I find myself having to huddle into a ball in the corner of my room filled with panic at the very concept that there are so many things to change and every action I take is too small to even make a dent. But slowly, I’ll pull myself out of it and realise that no good will ever come from allowing yourself to be pulled under into a sea of helplessness. And that’s when I get my ass in gear and go try and do something useful.

The problem with this desire for justice is that it makes relationships with certain people in my life difficult. To be honest, they’re definitely in the extreme minority. But I think everyone will find that at some point in their lives a person will enter into it that simply doesn’t fit. Mine has been with me my whole life, but it’s only very recently that we’ve suddenly morphed into violently opposing personalities. To cut a long story short, this individual hurt people that I care deeply about in a way that I find extremely hard to forgive. I hate conflict and would never go out of my way to start a fight unless the douchbag is really asking for it. And so I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping my distance and just making sure our paths never crossed. But as I realised today, even having a full on cat fight would have been a better strategy. By ignoring the problem and trying to pretend like you aren’t affected by it, all you are doing is pushing your feelings deep below the surface. But the thing is, they won’t stay there. It’s like when you’re at the swimming pool and you try your hardest to push the float under the water despite the obvious friction that’s forcing its way upwards; the second you relax it’ll burst out again (Also, I have a very real phobia of swimming and I use a float. I ain’t embarassed!)

The reason all of these thoughts came up today is because events have led up to a situation where that individual will, in the not too distant future, be entering into my own private bubble. I won’t lie, there have been arguments about the whole thing and the result remained the same; the bubble just ain’t tough enough this time. As I thought about it more though, the suggestion to get it all out in the open began to become less and less appealing. I don’t want the argument, I knew that. So what did I want? As I looked back and talked about it I realised that once again, my desire for justice was making things difficult. My anger at this individual stems from the fact they have done something wrong, something I would never do. And what hurt more was that there have been many times where I have been compared to them, and even lectured to be more like them. I wanted justice for that, and my desire for it had managed to apply a lens on every single action that they have carried out since, not seeing them as isolated incidents of bad judgement but rather grouping them together to support my decision to get that individual out of my life.

In doing all of this, I realised one simple truth today; I have taken away that individual’s right to be human, the right to make a mistake, the right to screw up. We all have that right I guess. So long as we realise that what we have done is wrong and that our intention was never to hurt anyone. By distancing myself from this individual, I stopped them from ever learning why, and instead I allowed it to build up so that it’s reached a point where things may well be permanently broken. I completely understand that we are different people, and the chances of us becoming BFFs and sharing tubs of ice cream as we drool over Dan Smith are a hell of a lot less than you finding a camel in your bed tomorrow morning. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t at least say hello without being so bloody fake.

There are so many more layers to this story but they don’t matter. What it all comes down to is the fact today I realised that I made a pretty huge mistake and I think I always knew that, I just sort of kidded myself that I was in the right and so everything I did was therefore okay. I screwed up. And I know what I did wrong. And tomorrow I’m going to try and fix that because if there’s even a slight possibility to fix this all, I’m not going to let it go. Even if it means swallowing my sometimes-bloated ego.

I’ll see you tomorrow my perfect peeps! ♥