Acceptance
I have a hard time discerning apathy from acceptance.
I was 12. Adam was my first long-term boyfriend. 6 months. We held hands and kissed and passed notes in Science class and listened to Anthrax a lot.
My mom made that relationship really weird.
His mom was weird. My mom was weird. We understood each other a little bit.
We broke up. My mom tried to make him get back together with me. Like I said: weird.
I'll never know what motivated him to target me so brutally over the next 4 years. The rest of middle school, all of high school. Mean nicknames, harsh words, rumors.
Older kids parroted the cruel nicknames he'd coined for me, and I just smirked. It broke my heart for awhile, but I got over it. And without any purchase from me, they got over it too.
I accepted what he was doing. I accepted that I could take it, so it was better that I was his target than someone who would slash their wrists over it. Sometimes he would make me cry. Sometimes I would ask him to stop. But once the initial emotional reaction was gone, I knew what his home life was like, I knew at his core he was a decent guy, I knew he had a lot of very real reasons to be angry and none of them were actionable. I knew something about that.
Years later, I ran into Adam in the break room at CompUSA where I was a cashier. He was applying for a job. I said hi and asked if he wanted anything from the vending machine since I was getting something to eat on break and would be sitting across from him. He almost cried. He acknowledged how mean he'd been to me over the years. He apologized. I'd already made my peace with him a long time ago, before he even got really mean about it. I accepted his apology and told him it was Ok. He couldn't believe how kind I was.
Since then, I've often looked back on that whole experience. Sometimes I think I was open-hearted and truly kind, and I've often been afraid I could never get back to that place.
Right now, though, what I see is that mix - acceptance, apathy. I accepted that Adam wasn't going to be nice to me anymore. And as soon as I accepted it, I didn't care.
Acceptance and apathy came hand-in-hand for me a lot. And not just with Adam. With a lot of things.
I treat them like they're synonymous a lot.
What do you think?
I was 12. Adam was my first long-term boyfriend. 6 months. We held hands and kissed and passed notes in Science class and listened to Anthrax a lot.
My mom made that relationship really weird.
His mom was weird. My mom was weird. We understood each other a little bit.
We broke up. My mom tried to make him get back together with me. Like I said: weird.
I'll never know what motivated him to target me so brutally over the next 4 years. The rest of middle school, all of high school. Mean nicknames, harsh words, rumors.
Older kids parroted the cruel nicknames he'd coined for me, and I just smirked. It broke my heart for awhile, but I got over it. And without any purchase from me, they got over it too.
I accepted what he was doing. I accepted that I could take it, so it was better that I was his target than someone who would slash their wrists over it. Sometimes he would make me cry. Sometimes I would ask him to stop. But once the initial emotional reaction was gone, I knew what his home life was like, I knew at his core he was a decent guy, I knew he had a lot of very real reasons to be angry and none of them were actionable. I knew something about that.
Years later, I ran into Adam in the break room at CompUSA where I was a cashier. He was applying for a job. I said hi and asked if he wanted anything from the vending machine since I was getting something to eat on break and would be sitting across from him. He almost cried. He acknowledged how mean he'd been to me over the years. He apologized. I'd already made my peace with him a long time ago, before he even got really mean about it. I accepted his apology and told him it was Ok. He couldn't believe how kind I was.
Since then, I've often looked back on that whole experience. Sometimes I think I was open-hearted and truly kind, and I've often been afraid I could never get back to that place.
Right now, though, what I see is that mix - acceptance, apathy. I accepted that Adam wasn't going to be nice to me anymore. And as soon as I accepted it, I didn't care.
Acceptance and apathy came hand-in-hand for me a lot. And not just with Adam. With a lot of things.
I treat them like they're synonymous a lot.
What do you think?