Is It Too Late to Apologize?

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash

Loving after trauma is hard, whether it’s fresh trauma from a recently ended abusive relationship or that nice, artisanal, baked-in trauma from childhood.

I recently thought I was protecting myself from someone who was triggering me like my ex, but I later wondered if pushing him away was a sign of a deeper unmet need from childhood.

I have what you might call a happily ever after problem. I want people to fill the roles I think would be beautiful and wonderful, which sounds lovely but doesn’t actually leave much room for people to be themselves. I thought I’d already learned this lesson in 2011 (I, of course, catalog my life lessons and cross index them for better pattern recognition) but here it is again, blaring in neon across my brain: You can’t make people do what you want them to do. No matter how much you love each other.

And I do love this person, which makes it even more scathing that I panicked and ran away when things didn’t feel safe.

Of course I panicked and ran when things didn’t feel safe, but coupled with the fact that I believe making mistakes makes me unlovable, my brain has settled on thinking he’ll probably hate me forever now.