THERE'S NO EXPIRATION DATE ON HURT FEELINGS

Hold on guys, this is a long one, but sometimes you just need to get it all out so you can dream about the endless german beers in your future.

Ahem.

Feelings are like nuclear chemicals. They might have a half-life, however the stronger and more potent they are, the longer they last.

It works that way for both positive and negative feelings. For instance, I very much loved and respected my Grandma Genie. It’s been nearly 20 years since she’s died and yet I still feel very strongly.

Just as I loved my Grandma, I hated Joe. He made fun of me every chance he got in Junior High, and he was malicious. Though I rarely saw him in  high school, I avoided him at all costs. 8 or 9 years ago my mom woke me up at 6am to tell me he’d been killed in Iraq. I sat up in bed, firmly told her GOOD, and went back to sleep. As my dreams took over I breathed a sigh of relief and very seriously hoped the death was a long painful one. The time passed, and I've thought about that moment and wondered if I was sorry. So far I haven't been. I do think I was perhaps a little harsh. Death is a permanent thing after all and I'm sure his mom probably loved him, but I would be lying if I didn’t still wish a helluva lot of pain on him.

The closer you are with someone, the more potent feelings can become. Whether it’s a small act of kindness or betrayal, it becomes bigger.

In my parent’s house a lot of feelings were swept under the rug. If something happened nobody talked about it. Nobody apologized.  When that happens, things fester. Sweeping feelings or events under the rug and moving on doesn’t rid someone of them.

The floor is clean, but under the rug it’s a dirty, disgusting mess.

It’s hard to come clean sometimes. It’s hard to acknowledge the dirt on the ground and take responsibility for what’s there. Since I started dating my husband, we’ve had the best relationship out of the absolute refusal to ignore dirt on the ground. Sometimes it’s tough because I’m the one admitting wrongness or being an ass, and I mean it's really hard. It sucks owning up to shit- but it’s good too because it passes. 

Last year an incident happened that made me very upset with a few close friends. I tried to live by my “talk it out” motto I adapted with hubby but I kept feeling guilty and unable to. Even though my feelings were evident, nobody spoke about them. Unfortunately this is the type of stuff that keeps me from falling asleep at night. It makes me angry, and not the pleasant person I feel I generally am. After awhile I grew the balls I knew I had and confronted them, only to be shut down. It happened months ago after all, and therefore was no longer considered relevant. In fact, it was annoying I even brought it up. Apparently hurt feelings have an expiration date. 

What do you do then? Do you just give up and let it go? "Move passed?" I suppose.

Unfortunately nothing is actually solved by doing that. It becomes difficult to be in the same room with somebody and know that there are roaches crawling around in the dirt under a rug without getting the heebie jeebies. Eventually the roaches will all die, everything will decompose as things do, but in the mean time it just sits there slowly rotting away. Now that's a fun image. An even more fun feeling. Personally, I'd like to be filled with sunshine and rainbow farts.

With the move to Germany coming up, it would have been easy to leave the country and forget about everything and lose our friendships. It was tough to confront them about the roaches, but having talked about it, we were able to sweep every piece of dirt and disgusting bug away. There was almost an instant feeling of relief.

Though we often  say “forgive and let live” I think we really mean “I don’t want to deal with it.” 

I don’t know about anybody else, but my new years resolution this year hasn’t been about losing weight or bettering my outside. It’s been about bettering my insides (I've got a crap ton of work to do and I'll be the first to admit it). 

While I've been better at owning up to my husband, this year I'm going to work on admitting when I'm wrong, not letting things fester, and being a lot more vocal when my own feelings are hurt. Probably a bigger task then I'm ready to take on, but baby steps people. Baby steps.