We were in the same class and I thought she was pretty and started chatting with her and trying to … I don’t know, you know, get to know someone well enough to start a relationship with them. However you do that – I still do not know.

I was also going through a period of severe depression and a period of severe vodka-in-the-morning alcoholism to compensate. I was not at my best. I remember every time I talked to her, and she seemed pleasant enough and friendly enough the whole time. At some point she mentioned she had a boyfriend, ok, cool; so what is the move here? completely stop talking to her? continue talking in a normal way? I attempted the latter, a few weeks later I got an official letter from the school saying she was concerned about “unwanted in-person contact and indirect contact with [me], which she deems to be harassing in nature” and I needed to sign a thing to never talk to her again.

I have a few unresolved points I can’t get over:

  • How am I supposed to continue existing knowing this occurred? I was labelled god-knows-what, I mentally carry it around like a scarlet letter. Is this the intended effect?

  • How am I supposed to enter a healthy relationship at this point? Do I still deserve love? Are you sure?

  • I am sober now, I am going to therapy, and so on, i am no longer a threat to society, etc etc

  • How can someone do something so austere, not even send a simple polite text or even a mean text before going straight to the authorities like an rat?

  • How can I not continually hate myself forever?

  • Riccosuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    How can someone do something so austere, not even send a simple polite text or even a mean text before going straight to the authorities like an rat?

    I want to address this point because it is the one where I felt you needed the most perspective. It is also central to everything else you asked here. One of the steps in the maturation process is learning how to empathize, and to consider things from someone else’s perspective even when that is uncomfortable. Another piece of that is learning to avoid taking things personally, and thinking in terms of people doing things to you.

    We judge others by their actions, and ourselves by our intentions. Try to give people the benefit of the doubt by not assigning motivations to their actions because the truth is we don’t know what someone’s else’s motivations are. Generally speaking, what other people are thinking is none of our fucking business.

    In terms of empathy, it is important to realize that for most of human history social interaction was an inherently vulnerable activity for women. Some women want to be friendly as a cultural norm, but may also be extremely averse to conflict due to fear of reprisal or violence. This is not inherently a reflection on you, and you have no idea what the other person’s lived experience might be. They may have have been the victim of sexual violence, child abuse, or other trauma. You just have no idea, and again it is not your business.

    In this case they made the decision to handle the situation administratively because that is what they were comfortable with. Your comment about them being a rat is based on your own misplaced anger and shame. That is not a healthy reaction to have, and you need to learn to give yourself grace. Forgive yourself because we all make mistakes. It is how we respond to our mistakes, and what we learn from them that matters.

    Perhaps you were being a bit overbearing because you weren’t in the healthiest frame of mind at the time, and were looking for genuine human contact to help curtail those emotions. You need to forgive yourself for that. Shit happens. It does not make you a bad person to have misjudged a situation just as it does not make the other person bad for asserting boundaries in a way they were comfortable with.

    Let me say this, accepting and asserting healthy boundaries is the foundation of every lasting and healthy adult relationship. You need to get comfortable with that, and really chew on it until you understand what that means as well as what that looks like. It is great you are in therapy and looking to grow emotionally as a person. Use that time to evaluate that topic of boundaries as it is the tool that will improve your relationships more than any other in my experience.

    Regarding the more personal questions you rased about the guilt and pain you are feeling: It is time to set down that burden. You need to give yourself permission to be vulnerable too. The best way out of pain is to walk through it, and not to wallow in it. It is easy to stay stuck, to stay in pain once that is what you have become accustomed to. Misery is like a security blanket. We become comfortable and complacent. We choose not to take chances, and give ourselves permission not to grow. It is a devious mental trap.

    To walk through the pain is to accept your mistakes, take accountability for your part in them, forgive yourself for them, and realize that one moment in time does not reflect the totality of who you are today. You are doing the work to grow, so give yourself credit for that. Give yourself the permission to make mistakes again, and to be happy anyway. No state is permanent, and no relationship is ever going to be anywhere close to perfect. People are messy. ALL OF THEM, EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE. So as we get older we (hopefully) learn how to get better at dealing with the mess. You gotta love yourself first as cliche as it is, and that means not taking anything too seriously. Live your life, fuck up here and there, love the highs and appreciate the learning experience of the lows. Stay sober, and challenge yourself always. If you do that you’ll be okay.

    Hopefully some of my ramblings here have been helpful or insightful in some way. If not, well, I did my best, and I ain’t perfect either friend. I’ve done a lot of bad shit in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of bad shit too. But I love life all the same. It is a wild ride, and I am thankful to be on it because I know it will be over in the blink of an eye.

    I will leave you with this: “We are but a speck of dust, and yet the whole universe may depend on us…”