I didn’t do anything wrong. So, why am I apologizing? I find myself asking this question a lot. Most of the time I think it’s to avoid an adverse reaction to whatever it is that I had done. I find myself apologizing for the most random things, like taking too long to bag my stuff at 7-11 when I bring my own bag. I wouldn’t call myself a passive person, but with the amount of times I say I’m sorry, you would think that I am.
I’ve been struggling the past few days, due to things out of my control, but the thing is, that my reaction makes the things worse. Most of the time I honestly don’t think I did anything wrong. I just don’t want to make waves, I don’t want to make things worse for a certain situation, so I say that I’m sorry when I shouldn’t. I think it’s because I want to save myself the trouble of cleaning up the mess of what ensues if I don’t apologize, or out of fear for what will happen if I don’t say it.
I have to learn that I can’t control what other people do or how they feel or how they react to something. I’m guilty of saying things without thinking, sometimes it warrants an apology, other times it really doesn’t, but I say it anyway. It’s something I have to work on, because instead of fully dealing with the situation, I stop it in its tracks and it just comes up again. I can save myself some trouble by letting the situation play out a little bit further, I suppose. I really just don’t know. The main thing is, like I just wrote, I cannot, under any circumstances control how another person reacts to something. Because everyone will react to something differently. I try to not let it get to me, but I can’t help it, I tend to take a lot of things personally, to not really have a thick skin.
I’m 24 I still have things to learn and things to figure out, it doesn’t help that I have Bipolar and anxiety. I feel like it just adds an extra layer to things, like I have to get past the layer of myself that deals with things on a bipolar level, then I have to deal with them on a level past that. It takes me longer to process things and I tend to feel things so deeply, I struggle with that a lot. Taking things to heart when I shouldn’t, even when people say what’s happening with them has nothing to do with me, I feel like it does. I don’t mean that in a self-centered type of way, more like, I did something wrong, it has to be why they’re feeling this way or that way.
Another feeling I feel very deeply, is guilt, I feel guilty about everything. Almost every word I say I feel guilty about, I’m always second guessing myself and I never actually get out what I want to say. So, I feel guilty about the wrong things. It really is just a mess that I’m in right now. I feel like I’m walking on egg shells, for no real reason in particular.
A Delicate Odyssey 