Before You Explain

I tell you that you hurt me and you’re already gathering evidence. Already lining up the reasons, the context, the version of events where you’re not the one who did this.

I don’t think you’re trying to be cruel. I think you learned somewhere along the way that being told you hurt someone feels like being accused of something, and your body doesn’t know the difference between criticism and threat, so it reaches for the nearest exit, dressed up as an explanation.

Because when I say you hurt me, you don’t hear a complaint. You hear a verdict on whether you’re a decent person or not. So you go and fetch proof, and I, the one actually bleeding, have to wait.

I’m not asking you to agree that you’re terrible. I’m telling you I was hurt, and somehow I never get to just be the one who’s hurting. I always have to reassure you first.

And while you’re building your case, I’m standing there, still hurt, now also managing you, now also softening it, now also making room for your discomfort, when I came here with my own.

I came to you with something real, and you handed me your defense instead.

Acknowledge first. Explain later, if at all. Not because you don’t have reasons; you probably do, but because my pain isn’t a debate you need to win. It’s just something that happened to me, because of you, and the least you owe me is a moment of just sitting in that, without needing me to agree that you didn’t mean it, before I’ve even finished telling you it hurt.

I know you didn’t mean it. I have never once thought you didn’t care. But every time I tell you something hurts, you hand me proof that you’re a good person, and I end up carrying the mental load of it, again and again.

I’m learning this slowly too, that meaning well means very little if the first thing I feel after telling you the truth is that I have to carry that weight for you too.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.