What lies behind the walls we build

It had been a few months since I had last spoken to a friend of mine. The circumstances of our last conversation were less than ideal, caused by an outburst of theirs, and brought into the mix were various, minor odd actions of theirs. I left this conversation feeling particularly unimpressed. It's not often that people so close to me end up disappointing me so much. The talks stopped abruptly, and as they left to do their own thing, so did I, keeping ourselves at arm's length from one another.

A few months have flown by and as they popped their head back into the daily group conversations, a weirdly strong feeling of distaste arose whenever I'd see them. It went to the point where I had to talk to others about them to make sure I wasn't crazy. Being reassured that what I felt was valid, I kept thinking about them negatively. But something didn't feel right. I thought; there's no way my feelings are entirely justified, are they? It got to a point where I began "assuming" things about them, unsavory behaviors, plots, speaking in people's backs. Simply by tying a few negative experiences together with this person I called a friend, I allowed myself to imagine things about them that seemed a bit excessive. After a while, I needed some time to myself to think about it, reflect on my own. So I went on a drive to my favorite thinking spot and reread months of conversations with them.

As it turns out, I did make some things up. A tendency we have whenever we misremember things is to let our brains patch up the holes. But when we're not thinking clearly, or emotions cloud our judgement, we tend to make up erroneous things. Had I not taken the time to actually review how I thought about this person, I'd probably try to smear them right now, with absolutely no valid ground whatsoever, using my skewed feelings like a weapon against someone I genuinely care about. And the worst thing in all of this; it would have been insanely easy. Effortless. That road was dug and paved for me already.

I think especially now more than ever it's truly important to review how you feel about someone before taking any kind of action. In an age where you can re-live conversations and where everyword you say is on the record, we need to make use of this to not only hold others accountable when applicable, but ourselves also.