Much needed perspective

January 2, 2026

I was really mad at E today, and to me it felt like she just kept fucking up. I realized at some point that I was just very hurt, and that I was kinda taking it out on her. But after she left me on read for 40 minutes and I was livid, she sent me a text saying that she needed me to listen and understand, and I took those 20 minutes while she was getting ready to call to put myself in her shoes. Before she sent that text, I was wondering how I could possibly put aside my anger, but after seeing that she had something she needed to get off her chest, something snapped (in a good way). I realized that she hadn’t asked for that before, and it suddenly dawned on me that it had been an incredibly stressful and painful month for her, and she hadn’t talked about any of her feelings. She had been bottling things up the whole time, and it finally was too much, and she was terrified because she had felt like it was selfish and not ok for her to take up space, given that she fucked up and was trying to make up for it. That broke my heart, since even though I want my own pain to be addressed, it shouldn't have come at her cost. We talked for a while, and there are a lot of things that I realized I had said while hurting, and I forced her to shoulder that pain without her bringing it up. She didn't feel like she could talk to me about that stuff, and I really regret that because I want her to know that she absolutely can. All of my anger almost immediately dissipated because I realized the version of me that was being mad at her was just the version of childhood me that was hurting from the neglect and the pattern from my parents. I did my best to fully give her a conversation where she felt like she could finally let go of a lot of that grief that she'd been holding on to silently. And overall, it was incredibly good. I think it's weird because somehow seeing that she had been hurting this whole time got rid of so much of my anger. I think it really made me realize how. I was really just beating up on someone who loves me so much, and while I understand that I'm hurting, I never want to hurt her. I want to be her peace, not the source of her pain.