Statute of Limitations

Anyone who knows me well knows there's nothing I like better than an all expense-paid guilt trip. I will feel guilty about anything and everything, some of it valid but mostly not. If I step on your foot by accident, you can be sure I'll feel guilty about it for the next two weeks and I will discuss to death whether or not you really accepted my apology and oh God, what could I have done better as to have avoided the foot-step in the first place?

But at some point, it's time to let go. Sometimes, I ruminate for only a few minutes, other times for hours, and every now and then for months and years. There's no hard and fast rule, but usually when it comes to other people, especially people I've cared about, the guilt lingers a lot longer. There are definitely ways I've acted, things that I've done, that I wish I could take back. Sometimes I felt forced into acting a certain way that was unlike myself, sometimes I did it all on my own with no provocation. The end result is that someone is hurt and it is, to an extent, my fault.

My goal is always to treat people the way I want to be treated. I fall short of that. When I fall short, I feel guilty. I'd like nothing more than to beg forgiveness from the people in question, but it's not realistic, it's not practical. Sometimes forgiving myself is really what's needed to move on. There's no reason to re-open a situation and discuss it to death, when there's nothing to be gained and even sadder, nothing to be lost. Especially when you take time into consideration, that the people who have been hurt have found their ways to cope and move on without you. There's never an absolution, but I'm pretty sure there's no need because what we want most from the people we hurt is the one thing they can never truly give us to our satisfaction.