4 Important Lessons From Examining My Past
March 8, 2008 | In Mindset |
Today has been a day of tears. It started with worry for my friend in the hospital and ended with deep regrets about the past. Unfortunately I can’t fix either, but I can learn from the experiences.
Photo by arquera
A good friend of mine, one of the groomsmen in my wedding as a matter of fact, is in the hospital with an infection in his lungs. I didn’t think that I was as upset as I am until my psychiatrist asked me how I’ve been the past few weeks. I mentioned that my friend is in the hospital, and then I started crying. While the doctor assures me he will be fine (in a weird twist he knew who I was talking about because we are both his patients, although I didn’t tell him my friend’s name), I still can’t help worrying.
In order to distract myself from those thoughts, I started thinking about this blog and the post I wrote yesterday about changing the past. I thought about a friend of mine from college and how things could have been very different if I had been confident enough to speak up about my feelings. This line of thought led me to a number of realizations, and a flood of tears.
The Past Becomes Clear
I finally, over 12 years later, realized that the friend I thought had been pushing me away really cared very much for me. At the time, I thought he didn’t want to date me. In retrospect, I see that he probably did but was too afraid to say so. I took his actions as rejection and concluded that he thought I was ugly, clingy, or stupid. So many events that I had interpreted as there being something wrong with me, I now see were really me getting it all wrong.
While dating this friend may never have happened, even if I had realized he didn’t think there was something wrong with me, my whole relationship with him was a missed opportunity. After college, we went our separate ways, something coming between us. I regret so many things about this relationship with the wisdom of hindsight, but my biggest regret is that I lost a good friend.
I could cry about this for several hours more, I’m sure. But, as I said before, I can’t change the past. In order to move forward, I choose instead to remember what I learned from my introspection this afternoon.
1. No matter what, there is always another side to the story. In college all I could see was my hurt. My friend said, “I’m sorry,” and I thought he was trying to let me down easy. What I realize now is that he was apologizing for hurting me. He wasn’t brushing me off, rather he really did care about how I felt. I was so sure there was something wrong with me, I couldn’t see events from his perspective. I probably ended up hurting him too, without even realizing it.
2. True friends always find a way to show you they care, even if you don’t realize it at first. So many little things can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, my friend offered to beat up another guy from my past. At the time, all I could think was that was a dumb offer because he would have been going up against someone from the military, 2 inches taller, and 50 pounds heavier. Besides, who was he kidding? He’d hurt me worse. How could I have been so blind? I didn’t see that he was willing to risk physical harm to defend me. If he didn’t care, why would he bother?
3. Realizing your mistakes allows you to grieve. I deeply regret not seeing his side of the story. I also deeply regret all the times I told myself that I was broken and worthless. I was young, although I would have argued it at the time. I was away from home, meeting new people, not that wise. I was vulnerable, mostly to myself. The hardest part of this whole tale is accepting that I was so cruel to myself when there was no reason to be. I pushed away someone I cared about and who cared about me because I was still convinced the childhood taunts were true.
4. Do everything you can to hold onto the people that matter most; don’t let true friends slip away. I can’t go back in time and apologize to my friend. It is possible that I could look him up now and reconnect. However, it’s been at least 8 years since I talked to him last. I’m not sure if it’s really a good idea to open old wounds just so I can get my own healing. That seems unfair to me. On the other hand, I have friends now who I can hold onto. My friend in the hospital, for instance. I hadn’t talked to him for a few months before I learned he was sick. Since then I’ve been to see him every couple of days at least. I know he appreciates it, even if he doesn’t expressly say so. (A big clue is refusing to let me go even if it’s clear he needs rest.)
There are several phrases that we hear often enough for them to be cliches: Learn from your mistakes; Hindsight is 20/20; With age comes wisdom. However, they wouldn’t have gotten to be cliches if there wasn’t an element of truth to them. I’ve realized today that there is a lot of truth. I’ve looked at a friendship from the past and finally understood how wrong I was about the way I thought it happened. I confronted some old self negativity and understood how wrong I was about that too.
Every time we examine the things we tell ourselves, we get that much closer to understanding why we act the way we do. When we examine a history of those same messages, we can see the patterns that emerge. All of this knowledge helps us change the future because we have no way to change the past.
Woman Crying Photo by MegElizabeth_; Rear View Mirror Photo by Winstonavich
Want to make sure you don't miss future posts? Subscribe via RSS  Subscribe via e-mail |
Print This Post
Links to related topics: Connecting With Others, Friends, Listening, Mindset, No Cost Giving, Self Expression, Taking Notice, Understanding Ourselves
Or go directly to a related post:
Comments (RSS) | Trackback URL | Comments Policy
[...] date me. He was truly perplexed by my ideas that it would never happen. Then there was the guy I talked about before who cared about me. I realized this to a certain extent at the time, and that helped. Then there [...]