Making amends…

Making amends can be so hard because often the people you want to make amends to are not ones who would give you a sincere apology for anything they have done and making amends to marcissists might just not even be worth it. Or else I’m sorry doesn’t and never will cut it even to the extent that they deny having had any problems with you at all, but you know they have, and they’re just refusing to be real to you. So making a list of those we have hurt and being willing to make amends I guess is all that is required.

I want to put down my arms, let go of conflict I have had with communities I was a part of and I honestly created so much more conflict than was necessary; but maybe I was unwilling to just walk away when my intuition was telling me something was off, and abuses of power and the potential abuse of power are the hardest thing in the world for me: I know that people are human though and often they do their best but it is so hard to trust that in people with some kind of authority. Intuitively my heart feels so sad like something is so wrong but I should never have made the assumptions I made about an individual person who I was feeling suspicious of for reasons I cannot explain. I don’t know if my apology for that could ever be accepted but I kind of assume it wouldn’t be; and yet that assumption probably comes out of huge fear, and I feel like as hard as it is to make amends that is one apology I should eventually try to make.

Some of the issues I had with that community were my own inability to express the precarious and dangerous situation I was in and the way sexual abuse affected me and the way I saw things and sensed danger was probably distorted out of my fear that they would never understand, I could never be held, and… that I would never get to be seen fairly because the cards were stacked against me, but maybe they were not the ones who stacked them against me. Maybe there was intentional wrongdoing and scapegoating against me; and yet I want to let go of my conflicts with everyone as much as possible, and this person did not deserve my condemnation. Part of my was lashing out like can you love me even when I am like this… and the truth is I don’t think they can hold me and love me, but still maybe I am not giving them enough benefit of the doubt to be able to live out their values. I feel like they will hold people who have done absolutely awful things but as for me because I attacked the organisation I am unforgivable. I felt unforgivable the first time I wrote a petition, actually, and I never addressed it. I don’t know why she scares me right now but I can be honest and say I am sorry to say it is true; I thought I saw her eating once when I was at the hospital and yes it scared me. That she might hate me and want all sorts of bad things to happen to me scares me. But I am sorry anyway and my words about her and the way I addressed issues was uncalled for: now I feel like oh I even still had a car back then, I was so much less vulnerable, I am sorry for being so immature about it all.

When I wrote to that organisation not long ago hoping to make some form of apology their phone call to the house was used to scare me and… I don’t know if they are in on that horribleness, I don’t, because my mind was messed with and I don’t know what is real anymore (and my mind was messed with especially around them: who knows, maybe they would have accepted me and this threatened those I was ‘living’ with, or maybe the organisation was on their side all along. I just don’t know. What I wrote about being regretful and remorseful for my actions was true though a lot of what I wrote also came out of being severely messed with and I later wanted to take some of it back: I mean, because I’m not saying I don’t still have my issues, and I hated that I felt like just being me, a human being, worthy of living and being loved, didn’t feel like enough, so I felt like I had to piggyback on my abusers’ ‘good standing’ in the community in order to be heard as worthy at all. It felt like me giving up my integrity which is: please see me as my own person, don’t accept me through the validation of my abuser(s)… that now feels so degrading, though I did it to myself… and then that house took advantage of that to make me feel horrible and scared of them again… but that is kind if how I feel I always made myself powerless in that organisation, even before I was aware of the extent to which I was abused… I increasingly did not feel seen as me, and I confirmed that with a self-fulfilling prophecy because I was so scared.

Now I feel a backlash against that impulse to write to them in that particular way and it feels really bad: if you would wish me good and not evil, please do it for me, because I am worthy of being loved, not because someone who hurt me might be in better standing. Take me or leave me on my own. And… I am so sorry to N. who I had no right to speak of in such a way. I am sorry I handled my issues so immaturely. It is hard to apologise when it is even harder to trust that the people you want to make amends to want you to live, but I will not jump to conclusions and will see you in your ever-changing uniqueness.

I want to make amends, and I hope you understand that my actions came out of enormous pain and that I regret lashing out in the ways I did. I am sorry and I wish you peace.