When old hurts come back to haunt ...

What is that saying … the road to hell is paved with good intentions? Okay, so I guess we know where I’m headed. I had all kinds of good intentions, blogging regularly, writing regularly, doing something – anything that was productive. Nope, haven’t done any of it.

I’ll tell you though. One of the reasons I haven’t blogged much is I keep talking myself out of it. I read a lot of blogs, those of people I admire, blogs where I learn cool stuff and blogs particularly of women writers I like. I’m always in awe of them. Their blogs are so smart and well written and so …. I don’t know, grown up? I always think I'll never measure up.

That internal critic I’ve railed about, that keeps me from writing sometimes, that same internal critic is around when I start to write for the blog. There is always a little voice in my ear telling me that my blog is sounding whiny and too self-centered, asking what my blog is really about and why anyone would want to read it.

Well heck, it’s my blog so I guess it can be self centered a little bit. I want my readers to like what I write, for it to get them to thinking, maybe to start a conversation, or maybe just to enjoy my writing, but there is that other saying, you can’t please all the people all the time.

So here goes, self centered and all about me .. but this is kind of for Shirley too, thanks girl for pushing me a little bit, you were right, I needed to write.

I consider myself somewhat of a student of human psychology. I try to figure out what people do and why, what motivates them, particularly what motivates people to do things that are hurtful to someone else. Does the offender think before they act? Do they care if they hurt another person? Do they think they should acknowledge the hurt and apologize? I “studied” human psychology in my career in law enforcement, what would make one person physically hurt another, someone they claim to love, stuff like that.

Now I’m retired and old (er). So now I really do it as it affects me and those around me. This story is going somewhere I promise.

I received an e-mail this evening. It was surprise. In fact, it came to my work e-mail address. I have no clue how the sender even knew my work e-mail address. The sender is someone from my past. I used to think of this person as my very best friend in the world. Someone I could talk to about anything, someone I would do anything for and I thought would do anything for me. Someone I could trust ... with my life.

We’ve had a falling out, me and this someone. Haven’t spoken at all in the last few months and prior to that hardly at all. The reason for no talking? I began to feel like almost everything out of their mouth was a lie, a self-serving- unnecessary-lie. It hurt. I began to wonder if anything we had ever shared had been honest. There were clues that would lead me to believe it hadn’t and that hurt even more.

I did what I usually do, I blamed myself, I wondered what I had done to make this person lie to me. I worried and fretted and almost begged them to remain my friend. Mind you I said, almost. I finally found my voice again and reminded the person and more importantly myself, that I didn’t deserve lies. There was no need for them and they only hurt. I cut off communication.  I couldn’t trust the person anymore, I would always question their motives, I would always wonder if when they said they worried about me or cared how I was feeling if it was really true.

So there it was, an e-mail from that person. I opened it and I was immediately transported back to that awful place I spent so many months. That place where I was hurt and lonely and wanted my old friend back. That place where I wanted to wave a magic wand and make the lies all go away, get my life back that had been stolen from me by the lies.

I am really smart and I knew what the best course of action was here. Ignore the e-mail, don’t let anyone have that kind of power and control over me or my emotional state. Don’t believe those words about worrying about me. If they were truly worried or really wanted to find out how I was there would have been more than one e-mail every three months. An e-mail with one line and no follow up. There would have been a phone call.

There are, however, those few people in my life that seem to suck the brains right out of my head. Did I ignore the e-mail, hell no. I responded. I was pithy and righteously indignant. I asked what this was about. I got in a few really great lines about the hurt and how it was still there and how much the lies have destroyed the trust.

And then I hit the send button. So much for smart. Did it help? No. Did it make me feel better? No. Did it solve anything? Hell no. I spent about a half an hour beating myself up for falling right back into that place, for giving up control. But then Shirley reminded me that no one has control unless I give it to them, that I could take back the control, I could write about it in my blog (which the e-mail sender says they read). So I outed them, I told the whole world (or the six people who will read this blog post) that someone hurt me with their lies. And I took back my life again.

So maybe it wasn’t all bad. Got a blog post out of it and an idea about another one. Would like to know your thoughts …. When you have a relationship with someone (friend, relative, lover, something more than a casual relationship), are there times when lying is a good route? Can the excuse “I didn’t want to hurt you”, really make the lie okay? I’ll let you know what I think in my next blog post, but want to know what other people think.