Your declared assumption is correct, I don't have any desire to point fingers or make you hurt or anything like that.
I do want to make a note of commentary (again) on that subject though, just for you to have it to mull over if you choose, and to be fair to myself, but most of what you've taken as attacks for the past several years have just been miscommunications stemming from a lack of trust. I've spoken a lot about things that hurt me because I wanted you to know how I'm feeling, because I believed that you didn't want me to feel the way I felt and hoped that giving you my context would help you see my point of view, so that you could share your own point of view and we could soften and heal wounds.
That paragraph right there also wasn't an attack, or blame. It's an observation, a point of view, but it's gentle. Once upon a time, when you loved me, we were able to talk about these things and the thoughts of hate or anger or blame or any of that never even came into the room with us, because we just knew that the other person wasn't trying to hurt us. We could tell each other directly how we had hurt one another and neither of us took it as an attack on who we were, because the whole point of those conversations was that we loved each other and knew each other and we knew that if one of us hurt the other one, we could point it out to them because they would want to know, because they would want to not do that thing again, or because they would want to present their own perspective and we could resolve differences together. Actions, consequences, intentions, all bound in trust and love.
I think, from observation and experience, that when you started to change the way you think about me, and honestly when you started to do things or feel things that made you feel guilty or scared, you started hearing things I said differently. At some point you lost your instinct for trust and love, and you lit a defensive fire in yourself that I didn't know you were feeding from my words until it was much too late. It had already burned all the happiness and trust you felt with me out of your mind and heart.
I don't say those things to make you feel bad, or to tell you that I think you're at fault, or anything that your nervous system might be screaming at you to believe right now. I tell you those things precisely because I still believe there's a small part of you that does trust me, and maybe, somewhere deep down, there's a flicker of a light that might just catch the right combination of words at the right time for you to be able to see a clear message through the caustic haze that's grown between us. I think that you're capable of acknowledging that your nervous system is reactionary and primitive (everyone's is), and that your ability to reason, and trust, and love, is capable of taking control away from that frightful shadow in you and accepting a gentler, better version of the world. Of trusting. Making kinder assumptions. Looking at things in less harsh lighting. Peeling back the oily film of fear and anger and anything else that's been smeared over the truth. Capable of hearing uncomfortable and painful truths and expressing compassion instead of anger or fear or hate or mistrust.
