I once had a friend. This friend was the bees knees, the apple's blossom, she was just the coolest person ever. People orbited her, flowed in her wake and gravitated towards her.
One day, my friend went a little bit crazy. I mean, we all go a little bit crazy sometimes. You know? The world just gets too loud and sharp and dangerous, so we go away for a while. I understand this, hell, I do it myself.
The main difference between my friend and me is in what we do when we come back from our little crazy spells.
The difference, btw, would be why after the last time my friend went crazy, she and I weren't so much friends anymore.
Let me illustrate, and see if you, dear reader, can pick up on the difference...
So, say you go a little bit crazy and take a break. You drop your friends, don't return phone calls, don't email, text or chat online. You simply are not at home to them. And one day, the crazy has retreated, you're feeling better, and you realize that all your friends aren't around anymore. You're alone.
You send out an email to your once dear and beloved, telling them that you're having a get together, and they should come over. When your friend(s) come over, you very graciously tell them that it's ok that there was a break in the relationship, you're ready to move on and forgive and forget the whole thing.
It's ok that they stopped calling, texting or emailing you, that they didn't try hard enough to maintain the relationship. It's even ok that they weren't strong enough to break through your wall of silence to reach you, slap you around and force you into therapy. You forgive them.
Got that? Ok, here's another one:
You take a break because the world is too rough, too demanding, and you just can't take it anymore. One day, you realize you're all alone, the house is a pit and the cats need food.
So you send out an email to your friends, telling them that you've had a rough couple of months, that you're really sorry you missed all the important things in their lives, and that you'd like to reconnect with them.
You find some therapy, even if it's just talking to your cats like the crazy cat person that you are, and you start to move out into the world again. You do your best to own your mistakes, the fact that you were a shitty friend, and to ask for forgiveness for the things you did wrong.
Got that one too?
See the fundamental difference between those two responses? One response is of a person who takes responsibility for the things they've done, for the mess, does what they can to fix their end of a relationship and allows time and space for forgiveness to come organically. The other version foists responsibility for the whole mess off onto everyone else.
The problem with the 'foist off responsibility' track is that it robs the crazy person of agency, takes away their power to change things and makes them the helpless victim of everyone else's weakness/lack of caring/failure to breach the wall of silence. It also makes all the friends into evil people who didn't care enough to make the effort.
I dislike the black and white approach to interpersonal relationships that implies, the hard edge of 'right/wrong' applied to the way we treat each other and the sheer power imbalance.
If you're in a relationship where you feel like you're either the victim or the aggressor, then that relationship is unhealthy. If you're ever tempted to try to squirrel out of your share of the responsibility for relationship conflict or troubles, if you find yourself apologizing for every bump in the relationship... the relationship isn't good for you, or for your friend.
So I had this friend. And I worshiped her. She was who I wanted to be.
I think of her sometimes, and I wonder how she is, if she's happy or sad, how she feels, what she thinks... and then I remember that I spent a lot of time apologizing to her for being weak, for being small and broken. I remember that I realized one day that there are two people in a relationship, and that every 'wrong' I'd been painted with could just as easily been hers.
I've taken responsibility for my half of the relationship, but I refused then and now, always and forevermore, to take responsibility for the other half.
There are two sides to every relationship, each side owned by a different person.
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