Letter 30 – The Dog Park

 

Dear Garrett,

It can’t have felt good, to have people look down on you and say I don’t like you. It’s hard to feel good about yourself when there are people telling you that they don’t like you. Or in a more distant way, to watch out for that person. That feels bad.

Today, I was at the dog park with Koda and Koda got into a fight with another dog. I don’t know why, but it happened. I don’t know who started it. I put Koda on a leash and when I looked up the other people were walking away with their dog. When they passed someone coming into the park they said, watch out for that lady. And, I felt hurt. And I felt bad. And it made me think of you. It is easy to say hurtful things. And how easy it is to feel so righteous in the moment and point at someone and say, YOU. You are not the good person here.

To feel unaccepted is to feel alone. Angry, and frustrated, and hurt. I am not innocent of those charges. I can only imagine how hurt-feeling you were when someone said something. You were not meeting our expectations. And we had expectations. Life is structured around expectations. That you do well in school. That you behave in a certain way. That you not behave in a certain way. That you get a job at a certain age and do the things that they ask you to do.

You weren’t good at that, and I believe you struggled between trying to and trying not to care. I think you were trying to do both of these things at the same time, and it must have been difficult. A constant struggle of trying to do it and not doing it and rebelling against it. Standing up for yourself, in your own way.

If we didn’t have any expectations, would it have made things better? Would it have given you what you needed to become the person you were meant to be? Or would it have been worse, giving you permission to become the person I don’t think you ever wanted to be? I will never know. I am sorry that I made you feel bad about yourself sometimes. I don’t want you to feel bad about yourself. I told you many times that I did not like what you were doing, that I hated what you were doing, but I never hated you.

I learned somewhere that in communication I needed to separate the person from the action. That you can hate what a person is doing, and not hate the person. That they needed to hear it like that. I hate what you are doing, but I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. Others, I know, did not know say it like that. They said, I don’t like you. You are stupid. You are not a good person. How hard it would be to carry that load. To resist those words. To continue to believe in yourself.

I wish I’d provided you with more support. I feel like I bolstered you often, but now I I’m not sure. I feel like I told you that you could do this. That you could make plans. That things would get better. We would find a way. But it wasn’t enough. My voice wasn’t loud enough, or consistent enough, or something enough. And I miss you so very much.