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A woman, a person of color, an atheist, a working class background, daughter of an divorced immigrant, having family in another country, a victim of assault, a personal struggle with mental illness, on and on and on: so many experiences different than my own.
She taught me so much, and demonstrated incredible strength in the face of adversity.
I think I wrote about this previously, but I’m not sure what I had to offer in comparison. I hope one day to talk with her and reflect on things, but I am wary of expecting too much. The last thing I want is to be just another pestering boy (first of all, eh) in her life.
I also am incredibly apprehensive the more I write her praises. I really do not want to deify the relationship. We had our issues without a doubt and she was absolutely difficult to deal with at times, but with most issues I would end up putting the blame on myself
And I feel as if it’s impossible to know if I’m focusing too much on my own shortcomings and missing things she did wrong, however it also feels incredibly pedantic to whine over little details when I systemically denied her true fulfillment for all of high school and half of
College. Like any grievance I could have would be completely overshadowed by what I was lacking for her in the relationship. I’m not sure, I think I’d need a therapist or some outside influence to know for sure. Really unfortunate that they were fully booked.
That being said, her handling of gender stuff was pretty rough, but still that was pretty understandable and I didn’t make it easy at first. And I think that’s where I get caught up with criticizing her. Even if I can finally get around to denouncing an action or behavior,
I write it off as understandable. And I would let it fester, and then blow up about issues, to which then the conversation would focus on my presentation. Lol if there’s one thing I would undeniably attribute to her the the skill of avoiding responsibility.
Quite impressive, but also pretty frustrating haha. I’m not sure why that’s humorous to me or makes me smile, it should be pretty bad, no? Her apologies sucked and definitely reinforced ideas that things were exclusively my fault. If I wasn’t so willing to hold the bag, it def
Would have caused problems. We also had pretty different approaches to conflict. She would take no shit from anyone, and I would usually let myself get trampled over for a while and explain it away. But sometimes I just couldn’t take it and exploded, and if no responsibility
Continued, it would make me pretty angry. At that point I think I would overextend and be too aggressive, and she would just absolutely shut down. I never felt like my concerns were adequately heard I think. I would let patterns of behavior slide for a while, and then would get
Told that I was crazy for reacting how I was, that it was no big deal. I really didn’t like that, and then everything would devolve and she would end up crying and do the classic “ok I’m sorry it’s ALL my fault” trash - not to excuse my actions, they sucked, I just never got
Resolution, and that’s pretty unfair to me. However, given all the shit I did to her, yknow it’s whatever. I probably shouldn’t have to discount it like that but that’s def how I feel. Anyway, I’m gonna go to bed now, I hope this is healthy.