We Make Mistakes in Order to Grow

I turned 22 years old today. Having gained another year in my life, I reflected on my past. I used to be a really shitty person. I was an angry teenage girl, unable to control her emotions, like a volcano erupting at the slightest trigger.

The limits of my language frustrate me, as I am unable to express my emotions accurately. While that is an inherent limitation of language, I feel responsible for my lack of mastery. This frustration at my own ineffective method of self-expression resulted in angry, hormone-riddled outbursts.

I hurt a lot of people. Boys, girls, the young, and the old. Friends and enemies. The wreckage I’ve left behind towards other people is mind-boggling.

Today I am still dealing with the leftovers of yesterday’s shame. Last night was difficult. I only slept when the sun began to rise because the entire night I doomscrolled and spiralled into anxiety.

I asked a mental health counsellor: “How do I love myself?”

The counsellor said to repeat to myself three (or more) times:

I make the world a better place.

When I repeat it out loud in front of the mirror, sometimes I feel better, sometimes I don’t.

After all, do I really make the world a better place?

I have learned so much from my past mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes as a teenager, when my brain had not fully matured. My close friend did too; he said he had done a lot of things that hurt other people, and even so, I respect him a lot and know he is a good person.

I admit my faults, having gone past the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I am not afraid of a difficult conversation. I am a sensitive communicator and listener. I do not avoid difficult conversations; I am well-equipped to handle them.

Even if someone irritates me now, I learn to regulate my emotions and keep my interactions with them diplomatic and inoffensive. I avoid pointless conflict, even though I can stand my ground when it matters.

Looking back at my past failed relationships, have these experiences finally made me a good girlfriend? I try to help my boyfriend as much as I can (despite my limitations) and do nice things that make him happy. I communicate my feelings honestly and transparently, even when it is difficult.

I am also conscientious about how my actions affect others, and I show up for my friends, helping them as best I can in practical and emotional matters.

However, there are many ways in which I make the world a worse place, too.

For one, I cause a lot of waste and emissions in my daily life. To overcome this, I am becoming more conscientious about using disposable packaging. I am also more aware of impulsive shopping habits and mindless consumerism. I also try to research into businesses I buy from and only support ethical businesses (as ethical as large businesses can be).

But the part I feel most guilty about is how my past emotional immaturity hurt others. With my past exes, I struggled with controlling my anger issues when my boundaries were transgressed, resulting in me overreacting and saying verbally abusive things. In retrospect, I deeply regretted my actions, and I have stopped repeating the mistakes I made.

Now, I am very careful before entering a relationship. I establish all my boundaries very clearly at the start, as well as the consequences for violating them. Instead of screaming and crying, begging someone to change their behaviour, I will leave the relationship. No matter how hard they try to make you stay, if you detect something is off, your priority should be to protect yourself.

Do not get into a relationship with men who disrespect you and your values. More important than avoiding being hurt yourself, you want to avoid situations that make you act in ways that you are not proud of. My point is not to excuse unethical behaviours or tendencies, but to become aware of our weaknesses and avoid situations that trigger them.

For example, I have CPTSD, and I get very triggered when someone touches me without consent or comments negatively on my body. In the past, I dated someone who made fun of my feminist values, is a political conservative, and regularly makes fun of vegans, feminists, and leftists.

He invalidated my feelings a lot. He kept on touching me physically, even as I yelled stop. The more I yelled, the more he touched me to trigger me. I kept telling him to get out of my space, but the more I tried to enforce my boundaries, the more he encroached on them.

I asked to break up a dozen times, but he just kept showing up and begging to stay. He wouldn’t listen to me and forced me to do what he wanted. He triggered my anger because he invalidated my boundaries.

We ended up hurting each other. I acted in ways I was not proud of, and I deeply regret them to this day. I should have realised that we were incompatible from the very beginning and left him as soon as I realised that. No matter how hard someone begs you to stay, if you are incompatible on a fundamental level, nothing will change that.

I also learned to leave relationships that only drain you. I also dated someone who financially exploited me, disrespected me, constantly asked for help but never wanted to help me back and kept an endless array of excuses. It made me really upset that the whole relationship revolved around my ex and their needs, while I felt just exploited, financially, energy-wise, and emotionally.

Whenever I expressed my feelings to him, he would withdraw and not respond, pretending it didn’t exist. Now, I strictly do not involve money in relationships. Be careful of people who take advantage of you and do not bring you any benefit in return.

Other than boys, I have regrets about how I was as a teenager, unable to control my explosive emotions. I hurt some girls in the past, and the people I still had contact with, I reached out to apologise. My mistakes ranged from unintentional offence to actual nasty fights.

Sometimes, I offended people, but I genuinely meant no malice. I was sincerely blind to social cues, and I was not conscious that my behaviour was upsetting to those around me at that time. Since then, I’ve become very cognizant of how I come across in group or work settings. You do not want to be seen as insensitively dominating the conversation or micromanaging the project. Avoid coming off as snobby, arrogant, or a know-it-all.

Other times, I should have processed my emotions better and delivered them politely and inoffensively. I was too frontal about my frustrations. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned to manage anger effectively. Avoid people and situations that trigger it. With some people, both parties can be immature and emotional and overly dramatic — such is what it is like being in the body of a teenage girl.

There are some girls, though, who I caused no fault towards, yet were still awful to me, plain, mean and horrible. I did not do anything wrong to them. I have tried to reach out to ask what her problem with me was, but they refused to communicate. My lesson here is not to bother too deeply about people who treat you badly for no reason. The reason why people are the way they are is that they are them, not because of you.

But who else did I hurt? I really do not recall. I think I genuinely tried to be a decent person most of the time. After all, I try to be introspective and aware of my faults, and I hate hurting anyone or being a bad person.

Perhaps the latter is a narcissistic concern, but consequently, I am careful about not causing harm. I get better at this goal the more mature I become. I am better at emotional control and making wiser, less impulsive decisions.

Knowing this, why do I still feel so guilty? Like, there is something unconscious that my brain is burying to protect me from significant pain. I don’t know what it is. I feel certain that there are many more people that I have hurt before, and that my brain is protecting me from recalling the memory. But as hard as I dig into my memory now, I cannot pull up more names or faces.

The fact that I am this conscientious, remembering and still feeling guilt and shame over skirmishes I had in high school, may be telling. Does this mean I am not a bad person? I don’t know.

I am also highly conscientious about my impact on the environment, but realistically, I find it hard to be truly sustainable because I have major difficulty dealing with the inconveniences. I am already anxious, depressed, traumatised, and exhausted, so the additional mental load of having to reorient myself significantly for sustainability takes tremendous effort (not that any of this is a valid excuse).

Just like how our base survival instincts inadvertently villainise, instead of humanise, those who hurt us, you may always be the villain in someone else’s story. Hurting yourself won’t fix that. The only thing you can do is be more mindful moving forward and learn from your mistakes.

Commit to behavioural therapy. A support group from people who went through what you went through. Just keep owning it. Apologise if you can. Explain why or what led you to your actions if they’re open to hearing it. But accept that they have the right to protect themselves from you. Then, forgive yourself, but don’t let yourself become that person again.

I try harder and harder every day to be the person I know I am without my illness, but even though I have become that person now (or at least, much closer to it), the people from my past aren’t around to witness it. Years of apologies, sincere effort, and proof of growth may not be enough for them. And that’s okay. My hurt ended up hurting others, and all I can do now is use the time I have left in this world to make it better.

In truth, I might be unintentionally hurting my current boyfriend. He is kind to me, but I lack the heart to be receptive towards and give kindness. I am unable to love him the way he loves me. My heart is full of lead, perpetually sinking no matter how much I try to lift it to the surface, again and again. Eventually, its weight might drag me down with it, too. My boyfriend says he loves me. But can he stand this? This perpetual sinking?

But I remind myself that I am doing my best in every part of my life, given the hand I’ve been dealt. If you think you could have done better, it is only in hindsight. You can’t rewrite history, but you can use it to help you move forward. You are learning and growing, and that’s okay.

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Yes, I have hurt people. But I also chose people who hurt me, repeating patterns of the familial dynamics that permanently left me a damaged, empty husk of a person. I’ve had a horrible time with relationships most of my life. I have not hurt anyone whom I wanted to remain in my life. Everyone I have hurt, I have done so to eliminate a threat, that is, I perceived them as one.

Express your apologies, and remember that you are doing your best, and that is good enough. We have to make mistakes to grow. You can’t free yourself if you can’t see yourself. I know all of this intellectually. Yet, the guilt persists, and I don’t expect it to go away anytime soon. We can only push forward and keep on trying to do better.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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