What Line?

Strangers often find me incredibly easy to talk to. I seem to attract conversation wherever I go. Yet, it isn’t always that easy for the people who know me. I can be relatively harsh when the subject is near and dear.

I’m not proud of that, it is just what happens. Of course over the years I have improved a lot. Part of that is because those nearest and dearest don’t live so close anymore and I don’t feel any personal need to instruct them on things they might not believe I have any real right to do. My husband use to tell me I was getting “historical.” Nothing infuriated me more than those words when we were at each other tooth and nail.

I’m sure he was right, although he used it as a trigger and it almost always hooked me. I used to try and let things slide until the dam burst. Then it just all came out in an emotional and chaotic torrent.

Communication is an art and I am good with words, but words used as barbs instead of constructive openings for mediating a change can be brutal. Hurt and upset I am ashamed to say, can make me brutal. If you are my student, or friend, I might seem to be the model conflict negotiator, and I was trained in that! But if you are like family?

I have a friend who says we have to be careful not to say too much sometimes. He is absolutely right. The hardest thing I ever have to do when I am passionately involved in something, is back off.

Running full tilt into an emotional situation, heart armored against attack, stomach roiling, and feelings shielded from being bruised, makes me less sensitive to another person’s feelings than I might be otherwise. Recognizing the line that should not be crossed is hard. It becomes the ongoing quest as I grow older.