Yelling email

I have never done well when people are mad at me.  Whether it’s deserved or not, I don’t handle it well.  The other day I got a scathing email from someone who wronged me in the past and who I recently talked about to with a mutual acquaintance. Nothing I said was untrue and I didn’t embellish a thing – there was no need really as the scale of his lousiness was pretty high.  Anyway, in this email, he was furious and now I feel terrible.  Not because I got called out for gossiping – because please, everyone does it. Not because while I thought what I was saying was done in confidence, it wasn’t. I feel bad because I spent at least 95% of my life trying to do the right thing.  Do right by people, do what’s expected of me, be kind, be helpful – and those moments when I let me guard down are the moments that come back and punch me in the face

When we were little and my sister and I would get mad at my mom – her patented reply was always “I’m sorry you feel that way.”  No matter what we said or how much we screamed – she was always sorry we felt that way.  She was never sorry for actions or words – she was sorry for how we felt.

I wanted to reply to his email – acknowledge how angry he was and apologize for how he was feeling without apologizing for my actions or my feelings – which I did, but yet, I still feel terrible.

In high school the most popular boy in my freshman class and I dated for about a minute and a half.  When he dumped me I was devastated.  I spent a long time talking badly about him after that and always felt guilty.  Years later I wrote him a letter apologizing and wishing him well.  And, honestly, I had forgotten that I did that until last fall when I ran into him on the streets of NYC – he lives in LA.  We grabbed a drink to catch up on the last 15 years and he brought it up and said how much that letter meant to him.  I remember writing that letter – tracking down his address and mailing it, but I wouldn’t have remembered it without his bringing it up. 

For this man – who I haven’t seen in over two years – who I think about so rarely that it’s laughable to be so irate with me that he sends me a novel of hate mail makes me so sad.  Because for all the good I try to do – he thinks I’m terrible.  And I realize now re-reading this post– that I sound like a self-important ass hole.  But I try every day to be a good person, and it really truly, 100% bothers me that this person who I don’t think is good people, doesn’t.  I wish I could brush it off, move on, not care – but I’m not built that way.