I’m a big proponent of venting. I’ve written about it before. How much I hate the artificial “Cult of Positivity” and how the healing power of a good vent with a trusted confidante cannot be underestimated.
It’s ironic, therefore, that taking my own advice has landed me in such a tragic place. How a therapeutic vent turned into a toxic overdose of friend (and tech) fail in a matter of a few car-crash-slow, can’t-hit-rewind moments.
I was venting about a friend, who is a colleague, to a trusted confidante, as part of a greater vent of all things professional and personal that were on my last nerve. The confidante, bless her and her patience with me, doesn’t know the colleague. She’s a great listener and often provides strategy/advice about how I might best address issues in general. I turn to her with my frustrations. It’s something many of us do with a friend, spouse, sister.
But rather than contain that private vent to one close trusted confidante that night, I accidentally sent – via multiple Skype windows – my overwrought, overblown late-night ramblings directly to the person who had me so vexed.
She didn’t deserve it. I’m not saying I had no reason to be upset. But the emotions I was working through were not the ones she (or anyone else, save perhaps my husband and trusted confidantes) needed to see me work though. It could only have been worse if I’d sent it on Twitter, or to a large mailing list. It was cringe-worthy.
Ever have one of those moments when you wish you could turn back time? Realized you’d just stomped on a rare and lovely flower, kicked a kitten, left the gate unlatched, the bathtub flowing over?
I, of all people, should know better, should be more careful.
In sixth grade I kept a diary. And into my diary I poured all my observations, hopes, fears, dreams and anger. Some of it justified and some of it horribly unjust. I didn’t edit, I didn’t hold back. It was a safe place for me. I let it all pour out. ALL.
I wrote (graphically) about such terrible and real subjects as which boys I could imagine having sex with someday and which ones were so foul I couldn’t. I wrote about who I was sure would end up pumping gas and who would live in a luxury high rise in Manhattan – with alarming accuracy, incidentally.
I wrote about who was smart and who was so painfully slow that having to sit and listen to them read a paragraph was torture.
I was cruel.
I wrote about who was so full of themselves that they were clearly full of shit. I wrote who lied habitually and who told the truth. Who was a true friend and who wasn’t. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Every painful fear and random thought I had.
Who had their period. Who didn’t. Who picked their nose – and ate it. Who smelled. Who had huge tits. I wrote about the violin teacher’s gnarly toupee, long pinky fingernail and creepy plastic ring with a spider. I wrote about how my homeroom teacher’s daughter looked like a chimp back in preschool.
I wrote it all. Those are the things I remember, there’s even more I forget. That diary is sealed in my attic. I have not cracked it since. It’s too painful, even after decades. But that diary, more than anything I’ve ever written, was REAL. As real as any emotion can be in the heat of the moment that pen hits paper. Exagerrated? Emotional? Of course. But completely open.
One day, I think in February of 6th grade, while I was away from home, my mom had a meeting at our house with the parents of two girls from my class. They were Girl Scout Troop co-leaders with her. The girls came along, hoping to hang out, talk about boys, talk about whatever drama had occurred that day. “Just go watch TV in Ciaran’s room,” my mom advised.
Those two girls went and watched television in my room and left with a much bigger story: they left with my diary. Which they sneakily brought to school the next day, and shared, spurred on by a few other girls. It was my first public reading. It went on in secret for days, until a teacher shut it down and my diary was returned to my parents. They were, thankfully, smart enough not to read it… they merely handed it back, and never spoke of it again.
You’d think the worst part would be the humiliation I felt at having my most private thoughts revealed. How the boys who were once my friends would never look me in the eye again, or would look me in the eye in a very different way, once they’d read my secret “fantasies” of “doing it” with them someday. How the mean girls I’d insulted plotted their revenge in excruciating second-by-second detail that would tick by for months to come.
That was the stuff of nightmares, for sure. But that wasn’t it. That was not the worst part.
It was the look of betrayal on the faces of my friends, both close and not-so-close. The not-so-close ones cringed at my pinpoint accuracy in identifying their flaws. How could they help but hate me for stating what they secretly feared? Even if I was wrong. Even if I didn’t really MEAN it. Even if it was a diatribe resulting from being picked last for kickball once.
Worse still, were the ones who I really and truly did love. But who I’d still written about in my now not-so-secret diary. Because they were as imperfect as I was. I wrote about them, knowing even as I penned in the lines, those slights that were painful in the moment would be inconsequential in the long run. My thoughts would remain private.
Except my thoughts did not remain private. And those dear friends? Turned their backs. Wouldn’t look me in the eye. Pretended they were reading when I got the shit kicked out of me, hard rubber balls thrown at my face repeatedly till I had to walk out of school with my head held high, red welts rising, and blood streaming down my neck and face mixed with tears. I cried because it hurt, and it hurt more that I’d made people who I thought cared about me, who I still cared about in my flawed way, hate me that much. With my WORDS.
As an adolescent and an adult I have historically been guarded with my words. Very guarded. I can count my true confidantes on one hand. My enemies, people I would say I wouldn’t work with, or befriend, are fewer. For the most part (though clearly less so recently!) I have avoided conflict and drama. I had a good run. Over 20 years.
Yet, here I go again. I’m not sure what caused me to let my guard down in this way. Stress. Hormones. Whatever the excuse, there really is none. There is no going back. I feel myself walking outside in the schoolyard of my soul, trying to find a way to fix it all. Lost once again. Hating myself for my mistakes, for those words that escaped my mind and did such damage.
I’ve labored over that feeling of horror now, with myself, with the situation, with all of it, for over a week. Feelings about the ol’ diary that I didn’t even remember having, welling up all the while. Seriously, I was sure I’d gotten over it.
I should mention that the story did not evolve into even worse Carrie-like drama for me. By 7th grade nobody even seemed to remember any of it. At first it was almost scarier, how quickly everyone forgot and forgave, than the venom with which they hated me those remaining four months of 6th grade. My slate was wiped clean, come fall, as if it had never happened. Zombie trance broken. Even I buried the memory after a little while. It was easier.
In middle school and beyond, I was popular again. Popular but guarded. Healed but tougher. The whole incident receded into a dream. A dream without much meaning or reason. But that’s middle school a lot of the time. Something I try to tell my own daughters now.
I know this. I cannot change the past. I can only change the future. I can only try harder to be the type of person I want to be. More careful with other’s emotions.
My words, apparently, are still a loaded weapon. Something that was never my intention. Something that still fills me with a certain amount of shame, regret, and horror.
My own 13 year-old, is currently navigating her own dramatic thicket of gossip and friendship struggles right now. I see her screwing up. I see her making choices that are good, and some that are bad. I can only advise her to learn from the bad choices. And find a way to forgive herself. It’s only human to screw up, after all.
So why can’t I take this same advice myself?
I suppose I do know the answer. I know that I need to find ways to kindly and immediately address issues with those with whom I am upset. Before the pile of misunderstandings and perceived slights fester and bubble into such a toxic brew. It’s a lot easier to address an issue than to apologize for a landmine. But it’s still so hard, isn’t it?
I am CERTAIN that most of my friends have trash-talked me at one point or another. I actually expect that. To their own husbands, and their own confidantes. If I had to see or hear it, I’d like to think I could forgive them. But I can’t be sure I could. Could you?
I sincerely hope for this reason, I never have to see or hear what people think of me in their worst, most frustrated moments with me. I really wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
Note: I’d like to thank a friend who offered me advice recently on self forgiveness with the sage quote “same boat different oar”, when I thought her situation was so much more forgivable, and Jenny from The Blog who recently shared her jr high school Bar Mitzvah horror story that made me laugh out loud. It’s nice to know other pre-teen social trauma survivors, particularly when life manages to stir it all up again for you. And of course I have to thank my good friend, the confidante who got caught up in this mess. She’s got much better advice than a diary!
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