That horrible feeling when you’re fighting with your loved ones
Whenever you’re caught in between, the famous phrase “there are two sides to every story” comes up. That’s what he said, she said, they said… how do you know where the truth lies? Did you experience something in first person? Did your best friend, brother or sister tell you about it? Most of us tend to believe the person we care about the most. And that’s why it’s always so hard to tell that same person when they’re wrong (or partially wrong). But it’s always easier to be the “other person”… the one everyone talks to, the one person people turn to for advice.
What if you’re the one that needs advice? And no one knows how to give it to you? We live in a world of perceptions, a world that is either black or white, but the truth most probably lies in the middle. Sometimes it happens to me, to be personally caught in the “there are two sides to every story”. Because let’s face it, all of us think we’re right (and the other person is wrong). So how can we resolve this? By putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes…
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes (especially when it involves your personal life) is hard. I mean, seriously. It means you have to question yourself. You have to question whether your belief system is right or wrong. This happens to me quite a lot, especially with my siblings.
Don’t get me wrong, my siblings are the best people in my life (especially since they allow me to question myself) but they are also the ones I clash with the most. There’s always something that you don’t understand completely, or that doesn’t get understood completely. You say something that seems completely normal and bam, your words get twisted around. And if you have a brother or a sister you can feel me on this… there’s nothing worse than arguing with your siblings.
Why is it so hard to express your feelings when it involves the people you grew up with? Is it because they were there every step of the way? Is it because they recall everything that’s happened to you? Is it because there’s a rooted competition amongst yourselves? Who knows. All I know is that when you argue with a sibling, you feel a void inside. A hole. And the worst thing is, when you try to talk about it, it seems like there’s a wall between yourselves. A battle that you have to win each time to show that you are right.
So now that I’m older, I try not to just win the fight. I try to listen to my sibling’s side. I try to put myself in their shoes. But sometimes I feel that it only goes one way… and I try to be patient and listen and explain…but then who wants to be the only one waving a white flag in a battle field?
I think talking with your siblings, friends, family or whoever, is so important when you argue. Because forgetting a fight isn’t going to solve it. It’s just going to postpone it. It’s going to create a bigger distance between you and the other person. Pretending everything is okay is just going to make things worse. And when the battle begins again, we all have more weapons against each other.
The worst thing is when you try to talk to that other person and he/she doesn’t want to. They either say they don’t want to talk about it, or they want to be alone, or they want to talk about it another time. That kind of response is the worst. It makes me think the other person isn’t trying to get himself/herself in my shoes. So where does the truth lie when you’re not able to discuss and share your feelings with a person? Nowhere. Inside yourself, as you’re feeling more alone than ever.
