Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.
Carl Sandberg
Dear one,
I love the power and versatility of words. I love that they cross all sort of boundaries from distance to socioeconomic status. You’d think that after so many years of being in this love affair, I might have reached some sort of word-Zen mountaintop, but that’s not how that cookie crumbled.
I still react when I should be acting. I still lash out when I’m hurt. A lifetime of trauma has to go somewhere, and if I’m not consistently mindful of the traffic circle from HEAD-to-HEART-to-MOUTH-to-HEAD-to-HEART-to-MOUTH, sometimes I get off at the wrong exit. Such was the case this weekend when I said something when I should have taken my own advice and said nothing.
I didn’t do my HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) check in, when in fact more than one of those applied. As a result, I said something in a moment of hurt that I can’t take back. The frustrating thing about that interaction is that the word-barb in question actually stole the attention away from the fact that something was bothering me. Instead of saying “this thing hurt me and I’d like to find a time to talk about it,” I said something hurtful.
Now, instead of dealing with what hurt me in the first place, I have to deal with the fallout from my reaction to what hurt me. This is where an inspirational writer would insert “lesson learned,” but I am a work in progress, and I dare not claim that I’ve fixed what’s broken simply because I can name it. But I am doing the work, and the work continues.
Never forget that I love you, and that excludes no one.
Love,
