Making Peace

They (the ominous 'they').....they say that breaking up is hard to do - but making peace is sometimes even harder. Sometimes, as in not always.

I recently went through one of those times with a friend where miscommunication, misconceptions and misunderstandings flourished and finally reached a breaking point that all but ended our friendship. Fortunately, we managed to find our way back from the edge upon which we teetered, hand in hand, after a lengthy conversation involving alot of 'but when you said....but I thought....I understood you to mean....why didn't you just tell me?' We made peace, we stayed friends, because we were both loathe to lose the other, and because we were both willing to take a closer look, a second listen and reinterpret the situation. When I put down the phone, I heaved a big sigh and enjoyed one of those moments of complete inner peace, a relief so huge it poured itself as a soothing balm upon any and all worries and left them sound asleep for hours.

I basked in my inner calm all afternoon and wondered - if making peace feels this good, why don't we do it more?

Because sometimes, it's just not that easy. It takes two, and sometimes it takes more of one than of the other. Sometimes the wound is too deep, too repetitive, the boundaries broken once too many, an inner reserve of forgiveness dried up after lengthy abuse. Sometimes, you have already walked so far and so long you just don't care enough anymore to walk the extra mile, and if peace is to be made, you wait for the other to cross the bridge before you. Sometimes, that ship has simply sailed and you choose to no longer sail with it or chase after it. You choose to make peace on your own, with yourself, as best you can, in the knowledge that you should expect no help from the one who lived the story with you. Sometimes, you have to accept they are not capable of introspection, of offering you anything but glib excuses and hand-me-down lines that leave you alone in your wrongs at every turn.

Everyone gets hurt. Everyone suffers the searing fury of betrayal, the woundedness of abandonment, the unshed tears of rejection, the confusion of boundaries overstepped and a heart taken for granted. The big magic trick is in remembering none of this has to define you. You define you. You decide when you have done enough, said enough, tried enough. You decide when you can forgive and forget, and when you can only forgive but never, ever forget.

 

I know I must forgive, for refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and waiting for the other to die. But I don't have to forget, and I don't have to be enslaved to the idea of making peace when I am not met as an equal by another. Sometimes, it's just a waiting game while you wait for them to catch up to what you already know. That saying sorry won't kill them. In fact, sometimes.......saying 'I'm sorry'  feels almost as good as Making Peace.