The Value of Anger & Regret

Apologies, forgiveness, regret, boundaries, and anger. Believe it or not, a lot of these stories are very abridged. This one was harder to write. I'm likely not going to be posting it on Facebook either, because this is... a lot. It is also long, but I think splitting it up would have been a mistake. All the cookies if you reach the end. I'll Venmo you so you can buy a box.

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Last year, I wrote a three-part blog series about different lessons I felt I'd walked away with. And when summer hit, I tried to do the same, but struggled a bit to fully sort out what I'd learned in the following year. But I think I know now. 

It’s been an eventful year. I don’t feel comfortable diving into everything, especially when some are more recent, but I will touch on at least two: My brother and I are talking again after several years of silence, and I’ve gone no-contact with my dad.

The radio silence with my brother was my fault. We’ve cleared it up, and more importantly, I apologized to both him and my sister-in-law (which is who I really owed an apology to, but for simplicity’s sake, I'll be referencing him more). I felt terrible and honestly the apology was a long time coming. It was hard to sit back and own that I’d hurt people, and not justify, minimize, or deflect it away. And I’m grateful it was accepted and we were able to move past it. They didn’t have to do that. The apology was owed regardless if they accepted it or not, but I’m glad it was.

Wisdom is usually associated with older people in society. It's prized and praised, but I think the price paid for it is often glossed over. But you can see hints of that price with the little winces and fallen smiles as those who have been through it share their advice. I think I've heard it said that even the wise were once fools. 

“No regrets.” I hear it all the time, but I think I’m grateful for mine. Regret can be a powerful teacher. I think if I can look at what I have or haven't done–where I have failed– I can grow, and hopefully be a better person if I can own those regrets without shame, although that may be the hardest part. I don’t think anyone makes it through life without regrets, including ones that feel like everything is falling to pieces. And I've definitely felt that at different times too.

 I know I'm going to hurt people. I'm going to make mistakes where I hurt myself. But most importantly is that it’s ok so long as I can say, yes this happened, and here's what I’ve learned. And people are going to regret their own mistakes, and if that includes that they’ve hurt me, hopefully I can forgive them too. 

Apologizing sucks though. It’s scary, it means admitting to screwing up, or sometimes disappointing someone, and then confronting them about it. It also means I might not be forgiven, and that is probably the most nerve-wracking part. But I don’t think I ever want to regret saying that I’m sorry. But I do think I can absolutely regret giving too many chances or forgiving too fast. That can also be a painful lesson.

I've heard the expression “impact is greater than intent.” Easy to say, but as I've learned, much harder in practice. It's easy to get into a fight and focus solely on my own pain to justify why I reacted the way I did and inadvertently hurt someone else. And that expression of impact being greater than intent doesn't come with an asterisk warning it rarely comes without nuance. It's hard as fuck to set all the reasons aside, even if they are true and justified. I can still acknowledge that I hurt someone, even if done unintentionally or in response to my own pain, while also knowing I was wronged on a greater scale. But I need to learn to separate those two things and when I make amends, focus on my part of it. I'm not even saying I'm great at apologizing now, but it's something I'm trying to consciously focus on and do better at. 

People talk a lot about apologizing, but when I think about how often I've been hurt and was never offered one, it makes me realize that most people struggle with it. It really is a scary thing to do. Like most parents, I try to teach my kids how. With kids it's usually easier. They don't normally have egos yet. And they usually have someone telling them they should. I'm trying to treat myself like I would my kids, and that means looking objectively as I possibly can at what I did and think, “Jess. Just say sorry.’

What's worse is thinking that I have apologized and realizing it wasn't good enough for the other person. Sometimes—and I don't think I've fully learned this one yet—I need to say sorry in the way they want to hear it. It's not up to me to decide if I did a good enough job. And that's probably the hardest part. But I think really owning how I impacted them, is part of it and it seems to help when I focus on and address it specifically.

With my brother, he confronted me after what was done. He was angry, and he had every right to be. But it took me entirely way too long to own that, and I'm more grateful that at least it wasn't too late—because that can happen too. 

With my dad, it was boundaries that ultimately led to me saying enough. Something that I'm good at, but also at times am too gracious with, is giving people multiple chances even if they don't apologize. And I want to be clear: I try to have multiple hard conversations with someone before I'm done with them. You'll know if you're on your last chance with me because I will explicitly warn that you are. There will be no confusion about it. I have to truly believe someone genuinely doesn't care for me at all before I give up, but I'd rather try, probably more than is healthy, if something can be salvaged.

If you asked my dad why I'm no-contact with him, he'd likely say it was because I don't want to talk politics with him. That is not the reason. To be clear, I have no problem talking about politics if it's polite and an actual conversation. I have conservative friends. I grew up in a house where Fox News was blasted for hours every day. Rush Limbaugh was a frequent radio voice, and politics dominated most conversations. I do not miss it. I hate identity politics now. It really does divide more than anything else I've experienced. I've actively tried to ruthlessly reduce how much I talk about that topic for my own sanity, but also because at the end of the day, it shouldn't really matter with the relationships in my life. So you have different opinions than me? Do we also talk and have a friendship based on other things we both enjoy or agree on? Great. That's what's more important to me. Besides, I’ve changed my mind about issues before, maybe you'll have insight that I haven't considered and it'll change again. I'm okay with that. I don't know everything. But that is not how my dad is.

My dad is obsessed with politics to an unhealthy level. For years (that is not an exaggeration), that's all he tried to talk to me about. Sometimes I'd humor him, or try to change the subject, or when pushed to my limit, I'd try to ask him to stop. He'd usually get angry then. From my mid-twenties onward, I tried to draw the line that I wouldn’t talk about politics. Pick literally anything else. He never did and would push the issue, or maybe others would try to help and tell him to leave me alone. If he did back down, it was with a “Fine!” followed by a slamming door or silent treatment. Never a real apology. The best I could hope for was an empty one of “sorry I yelled,” but an apology without a drop of change is useless to me. 

About four years ago I thought I'd had enough. I finally wrote him a scathing letter explaining how incredibly done I was with him constantly refusing to please not talk about politics with me. It was not gentle, but firm and at the time, final. It boiled down to why would I discuss politics with someone who shows no interest in my life other than discussing that subject? And if he couldn't not talk to me about politics, then I didn't want to talk to him at all. It got a little messy after that, but ultimately I thought the email had worked, despite him rolling his eyes and complaining that he wasn't ‘allowed’ to do what he wanted. And then he did what he always does: he started to slowly push what he thought he could get away with. 

To keep it short, he came over to the house at the beginning of this year. I was already tapped out emotionally due to some other issues, and here was my dad—demanding why I couldn't answer one of his political questions. I asked him to stop then, too. I said I wasn't in the mood for him right then, so please stop. But he's my dad and heaven forbid he not get his way. It ended in me surprising everyone, including myself, by absolutely losing my shit and kicking him out of the house. I'm not proud of how I handled that, but I am that I finally stood up for myself. And I yelled. I don't yell in fights, not normally at least. But I couldn't keep it in, which I've now been thinking a lot about—especially when it happened a second time since then.

I've been trying to learn a lot about emotional processing and how our subconscious drives so much of what we do. I struggle to suppress emotions, so I normally work through them just fine, but processing what I'm feeling and communicating that in a healthy way are very different things. And even when I do express myself, I don't have as much control over whether I'm being heard or not. And what I've learned is when I feel chronically unheard, unseen, unappreciated, or disrespected for a long enough time, my nervous system decides that asking calmly isn't working—so turn up the volume and let's see if they hear me then. It's not a conscious choice, but my temper overriding how I normally handle things is information I can stop and notice about what's going on with myself.

I don't think yelling is healthy. It can definitely fall under abuse if done frequently enough. Some people use it to bully or control others, some people never learn you don't need to yell and that there is another way, and then some people resort to it when a need isn't getting met after exhausting all other options. I don't think I know a single parent who hasn't yelled at their kids at least once. Normally, it's when I'm at my wits end and they're just not listening. I've learned to try to slow down and get their attention beforehand, but some days that fails too. But I try. And sometimes it happens with other relationships, like my dad, but on a much slower timeline. 

I shouldn't yell. So when I do, I try to look at why I did it in the first place. With my dad, it was years of disrespect and feeling unheard. I know why I finally exploded. It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it, and I can learn from that and hopefully prevent it in the future.

With that said, I've learned a few things from that anger. Regret is a teacher, but anger can be one as well. 

I shouldn't rush to move past conflict, especially if I've been deeply hurt. That it's okay to be angry and stay angry, even if it's uncomfortable for myself and others. I've said it before, and I'm understanding it more deeply now, but anger is oftentimes something in us trying to protect us from further harm. I think it's probably one of my last defenses. Anger is often a secondary emotional response, and it usually flares up when I'm hurt. That hurt might be when I feel disrespected, unheard, unseen, or wronged in some other way. It's my subconscious trying to tell me something is wrong that needs to be addressed. Anger can be good if I listen to what it's rooted in and what needs aren't being met. And I can grow from that, even if it's uncomfortable for me to say, “no. I'm not forgiving you yet, and I don't know when or if it will happen, but I will see if I can—but I'm not rushing it.”

With my dad, I can forgive him, but that doesn't mean I still want a relationship with him. All relationships need love, but they also need trust and I don't trust his word anymore. I know better at this point. 

 If I'm going to set certain boundaries, I also need to know what I'll do if they're crossed. I can't control someone else, only myself. And that includes walking away or no longer talking to someone if they can't respect what I've clearly expressed I need after several attempts at doing so. 

It makes me sad to go no-contact with my dad, but after years of having him ignoring me, his behavior finally spoke louder than his words: what I wanted didn't matter. I didn't matter. Only what he wanted did. And that hurts, but keeping him in my life would have hurt more, and I need to protect myself from someone who doesn't care about continually hurting me. I can still love my dad, but I also need to love myself. There's a thin line between being selfless and self-sacrificing, and I've seen how miserable people become when they confuse one for the other.

A lot of this is rooted in two things I think are pretty intertwined: bettering my own self-awareness/growth and boundaries for myself but also others. It's been hard, because like most real growth, it’s come from looking at where I've fallen short, accepting it, and trying to figure out how to keep those mistakes from happening again—and not just for myself, but for those around me as well so I can (hopefully) have better relationships as a result.

And part of that process is also forgiveness. Learning to forgive myself, allows me to do the same for others. I won't always know why people have hurt me—they might not even know damage has been done—but I can still be open to forgiving them as I try to understand their point of view and experiences. And that can happen without an apology from them too. 

And sometimes, when bigger mistakes happen, I need to remember to not make decisions during a crisis. I can hold back, let the pain settle, and then assess where I'm at. “Behavior is also a language,” is one of my favorite phrases I've heard. I can listen to what someone says, but it's what they do after that makes me believe them or not. 

Things don't happen in a vacuum and healthy people don't usually try to harm others, so maybe I should hold off on judgment until I can hear what they have to say first. I'm trying to learn how to let little injuries and slights roll off me. I need to let people be human and humans make mistakes, which is part of what makes life beautiful and growth possible. If wisdom is invaluable, then so is the fool before they gain it—and so am I. 

And while I believe in forgiveness, I also believe in boundaries. I’m the only one who decides what my limits are, and out of love and self-protection for myself, I need to know not just what they are but what I'll do if those limits are blown past by others. Ultimately, I think that's what self-respect is about.

And that's been a hard-earned lesson in the past year. But I've had some good teachers.