Cold Silence

"Because even though it scared me - that you might be just a bit upset at what happened - I wanted you to talk to me. Even if you were mad, even if it was just an argument...I guess I wanted it more than a cold silence."

This is taken from the blog of someone I know.  I am not currently going to attribute credit because I do not know if this person wants their writing credited in so public a manner, but if the author decides to read this and would like credit, I would be more than glad to put up a link to this post and/or the blog itself.  Anyhow...on to actually writing what I was going to say.

I know how that feels.  I know altogether too well.  Because every single time that we have a disagreement, this is what goes through my mind.  This is how it goes:

one of us says something small and insignificant
the other gets hurt...neither of us knows why, and we both know it hurts
someone lashes out, it doesn't really matter who
and then it goes downhill
because we hurt each other back and forth
until both of us are broken, scarred, cracked

And then we try to fix it.  Usually I try to apologize, to make it go away before anything else falls apart.  Sometimes I don't.  Sometimes I'm too hurt and I need you to tell me that I'll be okay, I need you to be the one to apologize.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that sometimes I need that, that I can't always be strong and make it all work.  I'm sorry that I can't fix everything, and can't make everything whole again.

I try.  So even when I do something that I know will hurt, I find that I never mean it, because sometimes even as I'm doing it, sometimes only a bit after the fact, I realize that I don't mean it, that I would rather turn that blade against myself before it strikes.  I hate inflicting pain on others, especially you, but I still do it sometimes, and that hurts me, too.

So then the question comes up of why the hell I do that.  Why do I hurt you, hurt me, hurt us?  Because when I'm hurt, I lash out.  I need to take the hurt out somehow, and either I take it out on myself, or I take it out on the world around me.  Usually it ends up being the world around me, especially the people closest to me...namely you.

You probably already knew all of this, or at least assumed something similar to explain this, to explain part of me.  So I don't really know why I wrote this.  It was in effect a reaction to having read that phrase of my friend's blog; that's what it made me think of because no matter how upset I am with you, no matter how much it hurts, I want you to be there...I would rather you be there and dig blades into my heart with your words than that you walk away and leave me as I am.

I keep writing these posts practically as letters.   Knowing me and my trends within this blog, it is only a phase.  Just like I had a phase of writing about depression and being overloaded, and a phase of writing really late at night that consisted largely of "I'm sorry I have nothing to write about" in three paragraphs, so I am probably also in a phase of writing posts to you, not even about you, just directed straight at you...sorting out my thoughts about you, in a way that points them in your direction.

I guess this is probably better than the late-night worthless posts, or the ones about how I feel pathetic and incapable.  Right now, I'm not in a terrible mood.  I'm tired, I have a lot of work to do, and some things are not exactly as I would like them to be.  But things seem to be working pretty well with us.  It's been a [comparatively] long time since we've gotten into a major disagreement, and the small arguments we've had have passed more quickly and smoothly than they had before.

This makes me think that it's working.  That it's getting better.  That maybe, just maybe, we are getting better, bits and pieces at a time.  Maybe that's why I want this to work so badly.  This is making me better, this is giving me a reason to smile, this is keeping me together when I feel like my life is falling apart.  Someone once said they dread what happens when this ends...not just to you, but to me.  The thing is, it'll hurt, certainly...it'll hurt a lot.  But I think I'll be fine.  I think that you are helping me becomes someone who doesn't need to be with you so much as wants to be with you.

I think this is good.  I don't remember how I got from silence and hurt to being a better person and strength, but that's alright.  This is, after all, my blog.  I am allowed to ramble.  I hope this is worth something to someone, be it me or you or anybody else who happens upon it.  Enjoy.