January 9, 2005 Steps 8 and 9 8. Make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all 9. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others Steps 8 and 9 of the 12-step program are often said to be the most difficult. Facing your inner demons is difficult, especially when those demons have caused grief to others. Challenging yourself to accept the fact that you have, intentionally or not, hurt someone by no fault of their own, is very trying. Asking for forgiveness is even harder. I'm not on a 12-step program, but those steps came to mind today, when two events happened that opened my eyes to how I have behaved towards others in the past, and how I want to change that behavior going forward. When I was living with Diego, I thought we had the perfect relationship most of the time. We rarely fought, and when we did, we were able to get past it by taking a step back and being rational. We shared a common interest in theater. He respected me as a writer, and I respected him as an actor and director. We had things to talk about all the time, and complemented one another pretty well. There only seemed to be one snag in the relationship (at the time...looking back on it, there were many snags, I just wasn't seeing them), and that snag was Diego's best friend Susanne. They had been best friends for many years, and had the kind of inseperable relationship that I share with Laurie. When I first met Susanne, I felt a certain coldness towards me that I couldn't explain. I was certain she hated me, whether it was because I was taking away time from her friend, or because she was in love with him secretly, or whatever hidden agenda I could place upon her. Over the year-plus that Diego and I were together, Susanne became a bigger and bigger issue dividing us. I refused to go to events when she was attending, and if Diego forced me to go, I would give her the cold shoulder, or be as polite as possible, all the while making sure she knew I was being polite, but only because I had to be. While I dragged Diego over to Laurie's house to watch bad tv, he couldn't get me to invite Susanne to go out to the movies with us. I was threatened by her. She was graceful and beautiful, talented and rich. Everything I thought I wasn't. The fact that she was female and Diego was gay had nothing to do with it; I often feared that he would announce that he had suddenly discovered a long-repressed bisexuality and that he was in love with Susanne. The fact that she was there for him when he needed her; the fact that she was well-liked by everyone she met; the fact that she never said a harsh word to or about me that I know of made no difference to me. Susanne, at the time, had become The Enemy, and I wanted The Enemy to be out of my life. Our entire relationship, Diego and I fought viciously about my treatment of Susanne, which I felt was entirely justified. After all, she was going to take him away from me. Since Diego and I split and I started focusing on getting my own state of mind back in order, I realized that Susanne had, in fact, nothing to do with our relationship. The problems that Diego and I had (a big one of which listed in this entry) were between us, and no third party was going to make them any better or any worse. It was something I've felt awful about for awhile now, but I didn't do anything about it. After all, this was a woman I heaped every loathsome feeling I had about myself and my relationship on, and she knew it. What could I do to make amends? The answer came to me this morning. And it was, of course, quite simple. Apologize. That single word came into my head when I woke up this morning, and I couldn't shake it. Not when I took my shower, not when I was chatting with Mom before she did her Sunday errands, not by watching some home improvement show on TLC. Apologize. It got so overwhelming that I opened up my backpack, booted up my laptop, and wrote this letter: Susanne, I'm sure I'm the last person you'd expect to be hearing from, but this is a letter that I've needed to write for a long time. I would like to apologize for the way I treated you during the time I was with Diego. It was a terrible, awful way to treat someone, and I have since felt absolute remorse over the fact that I never got to know you as a person. The truth is that I was in a bad, bad place when I met Diego, and I clung to him as some sort of a "savior," when what I mostly needed was a good therapist and the right medication to get my head straight. What resulted was an insane amount of jealousy towards his friends and, especially, you. You did nothing to deserve it, but I found you to be a threat because of my own issues, and couldn't get past that. You held out an olive branch to me, and I tossed it back in your face. I didn't fully engage in conversations with you, rather, I put on my "Polite Patrick" face and simply got through interactions, blocking you out because I was scared of losing Diego, and jealous of the connection you two had. Ironically enough, I expected him to be completely comfortable with the relationship I had with my best friend Laurie, which mirrors you and Diego's relationship to a certain extent. I'm truly sorry for all that. I have no excuse for it, and I don't expect you to forgive me or even give me a second thought. I am not interested in pursuing a relationship with Diego again, so there's no hidden agenda here. I can now see that you are a kind, good-hearted person that I treated badly for the worst of reasons, and I want you to know that it was never about you, it was all my own bullshit getting in the way. I'm sorry I missed "A Christmas Carol" this year, because I love your work onstage, and I think casting you as the Ghost of Christmas Past was an excellent choice, due to your graceful acting presence. I've probably rambled on too long. I hope that 2005 has started off well for you, and that the year continues to treat you well. All the best, Patrick I sent that out into the ether before I could think about revising it, editing it, or chickening out on it. I hit "send," closed the computer and went to work. Later in the day, I got a response from Susanne. It was completely unexpected. I thought she would either delete my e-mail without looking at it, or read it and believe that I was doing something to once again hurt her feelings. What I got back was a letter so lovely, so heartfelt, that I keep going back to read it over and over again. I'm not going to share it here, because she sent it to me and me alone, but the most important part was that, without hesitation, she forgave me. She forgave me. This woman that I openly despised for no good reason, out of the worst depths of the blackest part of my soul, simply and without a trace of bitterness, told me that, while she had been hurt by me, she knew that I was going through something awful, and that she was very pleased to hear from me. She even said that she wanted to stay in touch. Just like that, it was over. I apologized, and I was forgiven. What I did was difficult for me, but what Susanne did was noble. She took me at my word, listened to what I had to say, and accepted my apology without question. Do I want to keep in touch with her? It's a difficult question, because I don't have a lot of interest in staying in touch with Diego. It's still too painful to go back to that relationship and the things that were said and done on both sides. So going out for a casual lunch with Susanne or asking her to see a movie together would put a strain on both of us, I think, because she would be hanging out with her best-friend's ex who hurt him, and I'd be going out with the best-friend of my ex, who hurt me. I replied that I would like to keep in touch, but through e-mail for now. Boston is a very small city, and the theater community is even smaller, so I'm sure our paths will cross at some point (I definitely want to see her in her next performance onstage, she's truly a talented actress). When we do, I would like it to be as friends, rather than as people who knew one another and were friendly to each other because of a third party. Even if I never get another e-mail from Susanne or see her in person at all, this brief interaction was enough to open my eyes to a basic fact about myself. Often, I'm very wrong, and often the only way to make things right again is to take responsibility and apologize for it. Whether or not I get a response is unimportant to that process. If I'm forgiven, it's only that much more icing on the cake. If not, then I realize I've done what I can, the damage is irreversible, and move on, trying to do better next time. It's a lesson I'll most likely have to learn over and over again, but it's something good to know. The second event that happened today wasn't as dramatic, but opened my eyes even further to my own actions and how they affect others. It had to do with work, and while I said that I would name names in this journal, I'm going to keep this one to myself, because if any of my coworkers know about this journal (I'm pretty sure they don't, but one google search pops my name up in an instant) and stumble across this entry, I don't want them to know all the specifics. The basic story is this. When I met this particular coworker, I thought that s/he was kind of a cool, alterna-rocker Boston-band type who knew a hell of a lot about the job and also had the same taste in music as Laurie did. That was all I thought about him/her. Then an incident happened where I thought I had pissed him/her off (s/he changed the radio station I had just put on, and I phoned Laurie in her cubicle saying that that was a rude move to make, and I thought s/he heard me make that phone call). S/he didn't speak with me much after that time, and I didn't speak to him/her, either. We went about our respective jobs, not making conversation but not being openly hostile to one another either. After awhile on the job, I started getting the impression from fellow coworkers that s/he was "difficult" and "snotty" and "full of him/herself". That s/he got benefits from the boss that the rest of us didn't get, and was basically taking all the credit for everything good that ever happened in the department. My fatal mistake was believing this. I pride myself on not taking other peoples' word for who a person is, but making judgements on my own, especially at work. When I worked at The Student Loan Company, there was a coworker that everybody snickered about because she was very religious and didn't appear to have much of a sense of humor. I made it my mission to befriend her, if only to see if what everyone was saying about her was true. It turned out that, yes, she did read the Bible during her lunch break, but she never invited anyone to go to a Bible study with her, or proclaim her faith to the masses. She had a wicked sense of humor, but it was very subtle. She enjoyed a lot of the things I liked, and accepted me, the one outwardly gay person in the department, without question or judgement. We didn't become the best of friends, but I liked being at work when she was on-shift, because we could talk. Other people couldn't get it...they had their impression of her, and I didn't make much effort to dissuade them other than saying, "Well, I like her" and leaving it at that. Similarly, when I started with The Consulting Company, there was someone in the department that everyone thought was weird and abrasive and not someone that you'd want to have a conversation with. Again, I made the effort to get to know this person, and it turned out that s/he was funny and whip-smart, a science fiction geek like myself and respectful of others' opinions. Laurie and I really like this person, despite the protests from our coworkers that they can't stand him/her. This time, I (and Laurie) defend the coworker to people who make fun of him/her, because they simply haven't made the effort to understand that the way s/he comes across isn't at all the way s/he is. But this particular coworker, I went along with the majority consensus. They said s/he was a pain, so I thought of him/her as a pain. I didn't interact with him/her, and s/he didn't interact with me, and that seemed to be fine. A couple of weeks ago, though, we were changing the fishtank in the office, and I was explaining to Terry that we had to put a certain bacteria in the water to clear it up. I don't recall what this coworker said, but it was really funny, and it was directed to me. I laughed and joked with him/her for awhile, and then we went back to our respective work. Since then, I've tested the waters with him/her. I've made short bits of conversation when I've given him/her a document, and s/he's responded in kind. Today, I told him/her that I had forgotten to say how sorry I was about his/her dog, whom s/he had to put to sleep around Thanksgiving. When I heard the news, I wanted to say something, but it had been a busy day, and then I didn't have a shift with him/her for a week, and by the time we were on the same schedule again, I'd forgotten to say anything. I told him/her that I had remembered because of what is going on with Trooper, and we had a very long discussion about dogs and how they affect our lives. Throughout the day, s/he was much more open to me (and I to him/her) than usual. We joked a little, and talked without that strained feeling that I always got when we had to converse at work. As we were leaving for the night, I said something about how I hoped Monday would be busier than today, because I get bored without something to do. (It was an extremely slow shift). S/he said s/he didn't mind slow shifts at all, because s/he could get his/her own work done during the down-time. I said something about not having something to work on in my downtime, and s/he inquired about my plays. I said that this past year, I've been blocked, but was getting back into writing in earnest. Somehow, this conversation evolved into how we perceived one another through the five-plus years I've been in the department. S/he thought I didn't like him/her, I thought s/he couldn't stand me. We were both wrong. And s/he told me some things that gave me a real insight into why people told me things about him/her that simply weren't true, or came from such a skewed perspective that s/he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of becoming overly friendly with anybody in the department. We stood at the door talking for a full fifteen minutes about this, and I said that I was sorry for the assumptions I'd made, based on others' reports. S/he said that s/he was used to it, and had given up on trying to convince anyone that what they heard third-hand wasn't true. We took the elevator downstairs together (something we've never done before; one of us always leaves before the other, mostly by design), and when it hit the ground floor, I said, "Nice talking with you today." S/he said, "Nice talking with you, too." That simple sentence made all the difference in the world to me. These events aren't earth-shattering. They're not going to make the world a better place or cure cancer, but they made a subtle yet profound difference in the way I'm going to look at people from now on. I realize that I've been judgemental and short-sighted when I think I haven't been. I realize that I've let other peoples' opinions sway my own. I realize that I've caused hurt simply because I've been too wrapped up in my own hurt to pay attention to the feelings of others. I know I won't get this right every time. I'll fuck it up, and step on someone's toes intentionally or not. But I do avow that if I catch myself doing that again, I'll immediately take a step back, reevaluate how I'm thinking and acting, and act accordingly. Sometimes I'll go to Step 9, and try and make amends. And sometimes, whoever I'm trying to make amends with will do something extraordinary. They'll forgive me.