NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU

I've been struggling with a relationship lately. Lots of angst, lots of feelings, lots of frustration. I was dumping my heart out into the lap of one of my dearest friends this week and she said this to me:

This isn't about you. 

This is completely their issue. 

It isn't yours.

And as I thought about it more and more, it became something that was more and more important for me to internalize... because I've kept trying to make it my issue. And I probably try to make a lot of issues into my issues.

Because, you see, if things are my issues, well I can fix those. If something is off because I did something wrong or I said something that offended, if I'm the one being unreasonable... those are all things that I can fix. And if I can fix those things, then I can fix the relationship, right?

But if they're not my issue... well, there's really only so much that I can do about that. There's only so much of that I can fix. In fact, there's relatively little of that I can fix.

At the same time... it's a little bit freeing to start to internalize that. I'm very good at making things my fault. I apologize for everything. I have apologized for a lot of things that I didn't really think were my fault at all. But acknowledging that not everything is me... Well, that's freeing.

And maybe that doesn't fix the relationship. Maybe it won't ever be.

But it starts to fix me... and that's a start.

TRUST IS LIKE A VASE

Loss of trust sucks.

It is tremendously hard to take personal responsibility that you are the one to blame for someone else losing trust in you.  But, I'm coming to realize that it is sometimes just as hard and heartbreaking to be the one who has lost trust in someone else.

It's not just something you can fix with a simple solution.  You can't patch it with tape or glue. It's just there, undermining everything.  I'm reminded of the lyrics of a song I like:

"Well, a month or so has passed and now you're back again with me
But the cracks remain unmended in our once so-perfect team.
We seem to spend all our time just trying to make things right
But there cannot be a winner in this neverending fight."

It's like that.

You can try to fix everything else... but the loss of trust just sort of hangs out in there, picking at the tape, melting the glue. Just always there...  and that's true whether you're the one that broke the trust or the one who lost theirs.

It's just sad... that's all.  It's just sad to know there is no trust where there once was much.