day 10

i missed a few days. is this day 10 or day 15? well, it's the 10th day of my posting. 

the last fwe days i've been thinking lots about apologies. the following text will be an incoherent rambling

"i'm sorry you feel that way"

This is not an apology. It is, however, empathy. and sometimes useful, i think, if it's not meant as an apology, even though it has the words "i'm sorry" in it.

being asked to apologise. i'm torn on this one. if you need someone to apologies, you need to ask them to do so, they won't know. if you would like someone to be sorry for the things they've done, asking for an apology doesn't always work, because maybe they'll apologise when they know they need to, without actually being sorry. that feels quite untrustworthy though. 

i think you need to let people know when they've hurt you, without asking for an apology. the apology has to come from them. but without a commitment to change their behaviour, the apology is meaningless. except for you not knowing if they make that commitment. 

i also struggle with feeling hurt. i often know that i shouldnt feel hurt, and dont want to feel hurt but still get hurt by others! so why do i need to ask for an apology, instead of just becoming a better person and not being hurt? i guess there's levels to this - being hurt, and finding a behaviour in someone else difficult. if i find something difficult it's surely only reasonable to expect me to change myself. and if i dont want to, then to understand why. 

my therapist loves to tell me i dont live in a vacuum when i state the above. i know i dont live in a vacuum. that misses the point entirely. i dont not ask other people to change their behaviour because i think they dont exist. i focus on changing myself because that's all i can control. 

all that said, i think i need to work better on noticing in the moment when i get hurt, what caused it, coming out of the hurt, and then working on it at a later time to understand why that happened, and how i would want to behave when facing the same trigger. 

i think i'd like to revisit this post and try to make it coherent in future.