Aada has said that she will not read and she will not answer email anymore. This does not mean that I do not owe her an apology and a thank you. She has taken damage from my writing, to the point that I need to show true emotion, and this captures what I’m feeling today.
I failed her. She failed me. We could have had a safe, stable, loving relationship for many years if I’d just kept my mouth shut. We would have connected like a house on fire, because I was just so me in the beginning. I acted like a fuckboi jackass until I was faced with the reality of what I was doing. I have said this before, but it crossed the line into sexual harassment. That is the most painful, humiliating thing I have ever done… And I’m wondering if that’s what Aada means about turning judgment on myself. I have published this before, that I was entirely responsible for making our relationship feel unsafe to her in the beginning. It is only because I kept writing, kept encouraging myself to nurture real friendship with her that we recovered years later. It was a slow and debilitating process.
She sat through all of it, and didn’t turn away. My only aim in putting this here is to publicly apologize for the harm I caused Aada, because I can only control my half.
The point at which I lay myself bare to show that my feelings are genuine, because you cannot fake them in audio. I have sent Aada very few audio clips over the years, so perhaps that’s why she thinks that the positive aspects of our relationship are hard to find. I think that we would be so much easier with each other during a phone call, if we liked using the phone (seriously, warn me first. That’s just good policy. I don’t always have it in me because writing and talking are a different energy level).
It’s the ending and beginning this story needs, because as I have said before, my relationship with Aada is now over. It may begin again, or she may turn away and indeed ignore my first book.
Come on. Really? Even at Dollar Tree?
All of it depends on how much peace I can create between us, forgiving all that is past and moving forward with different ideas as to what friendships mean in my life.
Creating peace between us is being as publicly apologetic as I’ve been publicly angry.
I’d like to send her off in peace to the warmth of my voice, rather than the harshness of black and white reality.
Because we’ve gone in and out of each other’s lives so many times, I still want to encourage the ways in which she needed change, because they were good earmarks in the pages of my history that need addressing. If my writing comes across as manipulative, that needs to change first.
I’m laying down arms, and focusing on the peace I’m capable of creating.
I’ll let the me of 20 minutes ago have the last word.
Stories That Are All True 