(P.S.
Hot diggity dog I really intended for this to be like a three-sentence email. I have colossally fucked up my workday good god I am in the weeds now.
But I really hope that you will read all of this (obviously not right now it's a fucking novel sry) and read it carefully, and even reread it later on in a different state of mind. And then again. Because I think this one was really worth reading and examining and reflecting on. Gtg bye I am so fucked I have so much work to do ahhh - this letter was written with serious empathy and love and I hope it shows! No time for proofreading I rly gtg holy shit)
Know you're busy, so am I. I'll try to keep notes to a minimum. (P.S. LOL)
I still need your number if you want me to get an estimate for you so that you don't have to go anywhere in person with me.
Also need driver's license number, date, and expiry. I'd prefer not to receive them in text. And if you don't want to give them to me but still want the quote I'll just drive to New Braunfels and get them from our written records.
(This section is not an attack or demand, tone is still within what one would accept as normal in a business meeting, even if a bit dry.) I would also like to know what "ready" means to you in regards to treating me like a normal human being you're capable of talking to face to face; what conditions need to be met and what steps need to be taken to meet them and by whom for you to feel ready. Because we could get several months worth of these emails covered in a matter of hours and I really do want you to be completely free of me as soon as possible. I don't love being dragged along indefinitely, I feel like your pet antagonist.
(Here comes the softer parts) We have to stop spacing this out so much - I don't see us making the progress we need to in order to get this finished, going on the way we have.
I know you don't like our talks when we talk about things that hurt, but pain is entirely possible to experience within a place of safety. That's often the only way healing is possible. You can feel unsafe and still be safe, like Chai getting her teeth brushed. You can feel safe and be unsafe, like people taking refuge from problems by ignoring them. You may feel scared, nervous, that's normal. You may feel hurt, and it's important to distinguish whether that pain is being inflicted on you maliciously, unintentionally, or as a normal part of a mutual effort to heal. Is it the pain of a wound being opened for the purpose of causing harm? Is it the pain of a field surgeon doing a poor job stitching a wound? Are they doing a poor job but trying their best, or are they shaking because they're scared or also in pain, or are they being careless, or do they not realize they're botching it, or are you making it difficult to do properly by sabotaging the effort intentionally or unintentionally? Or is it the pain of a friend opening an incision to remove a barb buried in your flesh? Is it the pain of being the friend? Is it the pain of being the field surgeon? Do you see how pain and safety can fit together in so many different ways?
And I know you feel like we talk in circles about certain things and go nowhere, but your feelings don't define an objective reality, they're just one component of a complex and cyclical mental ecosystem along with perceptions, intentions, decisions, healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, mature and immature psychological defenses, cognitive distortions, a Rumsfeld Matrix of self-awareness, biases, desires, moods, physical state of being, and so much more.
You can't control the entire system from any single niche within it. You have to nurture the pieces deliberately and you have to work hard to understand what you're doing and how you're doing it and how it affects and is affected by every other component of the system if you're going to have any chance at making real progress in your own life. And in relationships of any sort, you have to factor in trust. The interaction of two ecosystems is too complex to completely map out for anyone except probably slightly insane academics who are also deeply in love, so humans developed trust as a modulator for strengthening the connections, the shared network, for deepening the integration of ecosystems. And for gently disintegrating connections with minimal harm. When, where, and how trust is pulled will each have its own ramifications for both ecosystems.
We revisit certain points a lot because they're central hubs to a lot of other details, and even though you can't see it from your point of view, I have an enormous amount of therapeutic context with which I make the promise that revisiting things over and over is the only way the most complex problems get solved. Even though our friendship and romantic relationship have been completely uprooted, the depth that those entwined roots had reached between us make us the only people who can truly help each other heal those deepest wounds. It won't be pleasant, but as someone who has experienced such wounds and the effects of applying various methodologies in attempt to heal them over the course of decades, with and without cooperation, medication, professional and unprofessional guidance, etc., I truly believe that it's worth experiencing upsetting conversations to heal. You'll never be ready if you're waiting to feel like you can talk to me or look at me without being upset, and you'll never truly heal if you try to ignore the wounds until they scar over. And if we never truly heal, we'll never truly be free of each other.
We should talk about the things we absolutely have to talk about in order to get me out of your life as soon as possible.
We should also talk about why things are the way they are. How we got here. That same conversation you hate having. The biggest difference now is that the roots have been completely pulled, there is no more harm you can do to me.
Feeling sad or frustrated or angry or in pain doesn't explicitly mean that you are unsafe, it doesn't explicitly mean you are experiencing harm.
You can still cause me pain, you can scare me and disappoint me and hurt me, but you can't cause me harm. I may still cause you pain, but I don't think I can cause you harm. I promise anyway I won't intentionally cause you harm, and if you ever feel that I am causing you harm, I promise to pull back and examine those feelings with you, listen to you and believe you and not undermine or invalidate you, so that we can look at the wound together and decide whether I'm botching the stitches intentionally or just doing a bad job. But we should talk about the things that cause us pain. We should do it with the trust that we will feel pain as part of that conversation and that we won't cause pain maliciously, and that we'll stop and examine pain and be honest with each other until our sutures are set and our futures are free.
Always more to say, of course.
~ Jonathan