I haven't had one of those "inadvertently was a huge dick and overstepped boundaries" in a good long while and I had one today and it sucks soooo bad.
Its one of those things where you think you have a handle on things and that youve figured shit out and you're a good person then boom, you get in a tussle with a friend and you feel like the biggest piece of shit.
We're good now but the past 3 hours I've been laying in bed wishing I could curl myself into an ever tighter sphere and blip out of existence. I just feel super ashamed and that's turning into really unhelpful thoughts.
And I really thought I was providing deep insight that would help the situation too! And my ego was bruised when she pushed back and put me in my place! And I had the GALL to get offended! How pathetic!
If she can forgive me, so can I. There is no end point to learning. We're just children from the day we're born to the day we die, with a thin veneer of "having our shit together" painted over somewhere in the middle. What I thought was a clear assessment was ego and judgement, and it simply didn't help the situation. I thought I was being nice, but didn't consider whether I was being kind
I was so scared that I lost a friend and that she hated me. Here's the lesson in all of this.
Rejection Sensitive Dysmorphia can be incredibly painful. I haven't been able to get to sleep, my body hurts, and I'm an anxious mess. I wished for unexistence so I didn't have to experience the pain anymore and I was self medicating with The Doomscroll so that I could just barely keep it together.
As unpleasant as the experience was, I just had to tank it for a few hours until we could talk about it and make amends. I'm glad that I could tank it so that my friend could have the space she needed because, if I were in her place, I would have wanted the space too.
The discomfort and pain we feel isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes, it's an inevitable risk of having relationships or doing anything that's worth doing.
