The other day, I found myself being honest with my boyfriend. He’s been struggling with me a bit, and it’s understandable for many different reasons. One of them being me. I’ve been described as hard to love by a couple of the people closest to me. I am. And you don’t need to pity me or tell me to get mental health help. Its good, I’m on top of it.
Either way, I’ll give you an example to what I mean. My friend and I were in New York City. This was our last night of a long weekend trip we took there, and we’d been running around like sewer rats trying to understand the logistics of NYC. We were Toronto racoons, you see, and we were accustomed to being able to plan everything out and that google maps was usually not wrong. NYC didn’t like that, and we were both running on fumes. The dinner place was great, we wished we’d come the night before. A patio that sat on a rooftop, and was much more clublike than we expected. I’d broken up my first serious relationship the month before, and this was supposed to be a mini-vacation / girls trip to remind us what being alive was like.
My friend was saying something, I’m sure neither of us remembers what, and I agreed with her, telling her that I also thought blank and blank about the situation. Her reply surprized me: “Why do you always have to know everything?” she snapped at me, and then went on, surely unaware that she’d be able to hurt me so with the words. “It’s like I can’t say anything, you have to say something else and be right about it. It’s so annoying like, just drop it.”
I tried to quench the hurt. It wasn’t worth it. Like I said, we were running on fumes. I did my best to ask her to explain what else was bothering her, or how I could help. “It’s not worth it,” she snapped back, “It’s too much effort, It’s fine.”
I tried again. “Please, tell me what I can do, I’m sorry.” I wished nothing more in that moment than to be worth the effort. That although I’d angered her, that she'd see I hadn’t meant to – I wasn’t aware of my ugly attitude. She didn’t budge, and I forgave her. The night went on.
I’m sure she didn’t realize in the moment that this could have been a conversation or a “hey, Vicky, did you know you are annoying when you do that? You have this ugly thing you do sometimes where you cut someone’s point off and have to be right about it and I don’t appreciate it. Do you mind relaxing for a bit? Its tiring.”
And life is usually like that, no one plans on snapping at their friend. But when it comes, it’s all about decision making. It’s about if the fight is worth it, or how much do you actually love them to help them or leave them in their bad attitudes. If you read this friend, sorry if I got the words wrong, writing is tricky like that; you get to see the world through my shade of rose-coloured glasses. And I’m sorry. I agree with you and have been more self-aware of it since – sometimes we need a slap in the face instead of a smack of the wrist.
But like I said, I’m a hard person to love. I think that’s okay, but it also haunts me. Doing horrible things or making stupid mistakes is never fun. You end up jaded by the consequences, or in total disarray and must put the puzzle of your life back together but half the pieces seem to have lost themselves or broken into smaller ones. I was honest with myself, and with my boyfriend the other day. I told him I hated that loving me caused him harm. I told him that I’d rather be alone then accidentally be hurting him. And I told him that most of my life people have found it hard to love me.
Honesty sucks.
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