To my dear friend, when you forget:

It is so easy, so damn easy, to assume that everyone else is normal and we are the screwed up ones. But in reality, there is no normal. There might be a more common, but not a normal. Just because you cry at times others wouldn’t, and get deeply affected by events others don’t, doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. The way in which you react to a tough situation isn’t good or bad. It just IS. and you get to own that, without  apologizing for it, without judging it.

When we apologize for how we are, how we feel, how we think, we are essentially saying, “something is wrong with me. I am flawed, to the point where I need to apologize for it.” (The exception being, if you hurt someone or hurt yourself, of course you apologize. But the reality is, you don’t hurt people that often. You just worry that you do.)

You get to not apologize for crying. For spinning. For feeling. You get to not apologize for worrying. For ruminating. Because it’s who you are, it’s your wiring. And just because others don’t do or feel those things doesn’t mean you are in the wrong. It doesn’t mean anything. It just IS.

The reason you apologize after breaking down, after crying, after being you, is because you feel shame. You feel that something is intrinsically wrong with you and you just did something that you shouldn’t have done. And you worry that by doing what you did, you have made yourself fundamentally unlovable. But try, just try, to embrace it. This is who you are. And you can trust yourself that the person on whom you just unloaded loves you because of you who are, not in spite of it. And don’t apologize. Because this is you, there are no other you’s in the world, and this person loves you and cares about you and how beautiful is that?

So. Do not apologize to me for venting. For coming into my office and breaking down. For emailing long strings of thoughts. For talking and talking until you’ve let it out. Rest assured that at this point in my life, I no longer expend energy on unhealthy relationships. Which means that if you’re a part of my life, it’s not because I feel obligated or because we are unhealthily intertwined. You are in my life because I care about you, and I want to hear you, to listen to you, to hold your pain when you can’t breathe.

And so, you just be you. However and whatever that means and looks like, and I promise you, I will love you through it.