Dear friend
I'm sorry I haven't written to you in a while. I would be lying if I said things were okay. Because honestly? They aren't.
But don't get the wrong idea. Emotional regulation is a hell of a skill to have developed (and I continue to do so). Learning to accept that I can allow positive emotions to exist without erasing the negative has helped tremendously in mitigating spirals and the total loss of agency. I guess what really stands out is how I've learned to go back to, how the kids say, “le suffering en silence”. This is fine. At least, having lived through that, I can make do here. I don't need you to pity me, to support me, to make it all better. I'm fine. I mean I'm not. But I really am.
It's a strange feeling; to feel pain and heartbreak so viciously, while learning to hold it privately. To not clutch at any friend who will, unwittingly, receive a(n un)healthy dose of ✨ trauma dumping ✨. I don't need to tell everyone what is going on with every little thing. I'm not trying to extract solutions from people anymore. I'm not asking anyone to “fix me”. The pain is there - maybe it always will be - and I will, in my way, learn to live with it.
How cruel life is to learn valuable lessons as these, only when it is too late. When the very people who were hurt by my actions cannot see the difference I've made, because distance was the catalyst that prompted the change in the first place, what is one to do in this situation? Whence come redemption, if ever? Whither my emotional regulation skills, if there's not a witness to them? Perhaps they need not a witness save for me myself and I. Truthfully, I'm unsure how I feel about that.
I suppose that is growth, in a way. Making the changes for my sake. And at least, half-intentionally, I have some semblance of stability and peace in my life-long passion: video games. At least I hope it is peace. Some may call it avoidance…
Some may be right.
But this is fine.