[05] scariness1. For now I’ve decided that “scary” depends so much on what other people fear in anot

[05] scariness1. For now I’ve decided that “scary” depends so much on what other people fear in another person or relationship that there’s no way I could ever track how scary I am or to whom I am scary. I have so little control of how I am perceived that the best I can do is be me and figure it out from there. Some will find me impossibly soft and harmless. Others will find me terrifying. I can probably be both.2. My experience and expression of anger is a very new thing for me. Allowing myself to feel angry without immediately squashing and modifying the emotion has only begun to happen in the past couple of months. It is also in the past couple of months that people have told me I can be scary, or have seemed to perceive threat in my behavior and have reacted accordingly. What I have noticed in those moments is that I am upset at having been hurt, angry at having been treated unjustly, and unwilling to excuse the other person’s wrongdoing for them. With people that I really care about, I struggle not to protect them from shame. In situations where they act poorly and hurt me, I have, for my whole life, been quick to try and alleviate the sharpness of having hurt another person by promising them that I’m not actually hurt, that it wasn’t a big deal, that of course I forgive them, etc. I heard a lot about the importance of forgiving, letting go, and moving on, but was never told about the equally insidious poison of forgiveness constantly issued where there was no apology and there should have been. To ask for accountability and apology from people who love you and hurt you is healing and loving for all parties. But it does make you look a little scary when you’ve never asked for it before.  -- source link

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