Last night I stumbled across the horrifying truth that I am actually an asshole. I often tell people I’m an asshole, exclaiming that “I’m trash / a nightmare / emotional / a pain in the arse,” but I don’t really mean it, I’m just in the habit of self-deprecating to dismantle any expectations I feel I can’t reach. It could be translated to: Don’t get your hopes up, babe, I’m gonna let you down one day.
But last night, sitting on a patio chair in my overgrown garden (all the rain we got this summer turned it into a jungle), half torn from gazing into the twinkly night sky and staring at horror at the huge spider that was crawling towards my feet, a friend helped me come to that realisation.
A family friend had been distant with me lately, and I couldn’t work out why. As expected from a nightmare like me I over-analysed it for weeks, listing every interaction and event that had happened between the two of us from the start of the year to present day in my head, tallying up my potential wrongs but still not getting the math right enough to understand why I was receiving the cold shoulder. Last night my mate was sitting opposite me puffing on a vape (cherry vanilla), tapping her Fendi slides on my unwashed patio, waiting for me to finish my rant about the situation before casually reading me to the ground in a way only a very smart person could. This particular friend who was visiting always knows how to set me straight so diplomatically, so efficiently yet subtly enough to not leave me feeling defensively ashamed for my said bad behaviour. Now that’s a good teacher. It just is what it is, and you needed to know, her face said. Her Fendi slide slid off her foot and plopped to the floor like a mic drop as she finished her opinion and crossed her legs.
While I’d been racking my brains and internally playing the victim as a consequence of my cluelessness for months, it turned out I’d actually hurt my family friend quite badly, but not intentionally - (does the lack of intention even matter when you’re wrong?) - but enough to understand that hurt people hurt people and I should have had patience, I should have tried to speak to them, I should have tried to understand, I should have showed them some kindness instead of emulating the distance I felt back to them in a confused version of what was plain old spite.
I went to bed wondering if I pissed off anyone else without having a clue I’d done so, but I knew the answer: Of course I had. Then came the spiral.
I wondered how many times someone had left my company seething over something I said while I’d remained oblivious to any offense or hurt I caused. How many times I’d earnt the role of being the subject of a bitchfest when I wasn’t there, how many times someone had typed my name in a search bar and sneered at the results - or maybe worse, laughed. How many times have I made someone cry without knowing?
Is true self-awareness even possible? I thought I was on a path to enlightenment - a smug position I adapted in my thirties - but do I even have a flipping clue how people see me? Am I even a nice person, lmao? Am I going to hell? I couldn’t sleep. The moment that my friend set me straight on actions of mine that I’d never thought twice about, any convictions I had about having self-awareness became a delusion.
We’ve all discussed people, moaned about them, stalked them online (don’t lie to me mate), painted them as a villain to others, to ourselves. Is it too much for our psyche to really sit with the fact that we ourselves are often the villain, the unreasonable person, the nasty one… the asshole? Are we even able to comprehend that reality in the same way another human being outside of ourselves can?
Are we all deluded?
We know that the reflection we see in the mirror is a reversed version of ourselves - only others are able to see the true us with their own eyes - and the same goes for our brain; what we see is a raw, backwards distortion. We can only process our upside down vision in a way that ties in with what the brain already knows to make sense. Well, fuck. As the below Google (my oracle, my friend) put it:
Don’t worry, I haven’t eaten an edible (it’s 10am on a Saturday morning, I’ll give it til midday at least) but I feel like I’m in a headfuck. Is it possible to be a perfectly good person, to cause no pain? I’d like to say yes, but that is a childish and stupid answer. To be alive is to experience pain but to also know that sometimes, you are going to be the pain, even when that isn’t your intent.
I guess, in short, this newsletter is to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I snapped at you and I’m sorry I was bitchy, I’m sorry for when I had a jealous moment; you deserved to be celebrated, and I was feeling too self-pitying to revel in your triumphs with you. I’m sorry I rang you and went on and on about myself without asking how you were first. Hands up - I get it wrong sometimes, even when I have no idea I’ve got it so wrong. All I can do is hope you forgive me and more importantly, I’m going to try to be better.
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Great piece 👌🏽
Loved this, thank you