Detour

Last week...Friday, I think it was...I took a bit of a detour off my path to better health by indulging my dark side and feeding the pain and anger that I have over the less pleasant aspects of my life. Unfortunately, the punching bag in this case turned out to be someone who actually may have meant well, and because of prior incidents and past miscommunication I misread this person and overreacted.

I destroyed the last two pages of a letter I had mostly burned before. Then got in a somewhat painful e-mail discussion with the author of the destroyed letter.

It is only today...five days later, that I realized that aspects of what was said to me were accurate. I do have a dark side, a tendency to leap before I look, to not just euthanize but to immolate, to cast individuals in rigid archetypes...good and evil, truthteller and liar, friend or foe. Which is ironic, because I actually thrive in nuance and shading and appreciate that the world is not black and white and is not even gray, but bluish-gray, silver-gray, charcoal gray. I am trying to be a painter, dammit, I better recognize that nuance!

I have probably sadly and singlehandedly destroyed a relationship that need not have been destroyed.

[And were it not for the faith and desire of another to reach out to me, might have let go another relationship...which, thankfully, is not destroyed but was in fact strengthened last night.]

And anyone who reads this blog will notice that I go back and forth in moods...from extreme joy to despair...it can't be helped, that is where I am and what the blog is for.

I know that I am a somewhat decent person, but when I receive criticism - constructive or otherwise - its echo is magnified and all I hear is the criticism. All I sense is the loss. And I dread it. And, as far as the loss of a loved one is concerned, as much of a great (albeit intense) communicator that I think I am, I try to beat that loss to the punch and destroy it myself than have that loved one pull away from me.

That fear of loss, and my reaction to it, is my fatal flaw. Maybe now, five days after I destroyed a letter and possibly any chance at connection with someone whom I did value, I can begin to learn my lesson and let go of this fear.

Or learn to just let go...