You have never really been listened to, granted.

I grant you everything.  I grant you the pain of never really ever having been listened to.  It is a primal pain, to feel that when you first spoke, until now, that you have rarely, if ever, been attentively listened to.   Dig it.  Many people, sadly, experience this in life.  It is a trauma that puts a heavy burden on the soul.

I knew a woman who said she loved me, acted very much like she did.   She did very loving things for me, was generous with her love.  I could tell she hurt when I hurt.  She gave me advice sometimes about my life, what she thought I should do to be in less pain.  She told me she was giving me the same advice she had found useful in her life.   When she was dispensing advice she told me she always talked to me the same way she spoke to herself.

I did not doubt this, even as I often resisted some of her advice.  One day, when she tried to insist, I said to her “but sometimes you have talked to yourself and convinced yourself the best thing to do was to put your head in the oven.”  She was quiet.  She had told me of these moments of weakness, the things she had done in desperate moments.  I wasn’t telling her this to make her feel bad, I was reminding her of the difference between us, and how we treat ourselves, to put her advice in perspective.  

“I remind you of this to illustrate as vividly as I can, so you will have no doubt — if someone tried to put my head in an oven I would fight them to the death.   I would never put my own head in an oven.”   Just saying.  She still offered advice from time to time, but I think this perspective stayed with her.

People who care about you will sometimes give you advice, with the best of intentions.  They tell you things meaning very much to help.   They may never have been really listened to themselves.  Many people were not.  They learned as best they could, filled their lives as best they could with the things they needed and never got in life.   They took whatever wisdom they were able to find and they try to share it with you out of concern.   Not all of these people can help you.  In fact, few can actually help you.  

Turns out the thing that probably helps the most is someone listening to you with enough care to hear what you are actually saying.  This kind of listening does not  assume it knows what you are about to say and does not respond to what it thinks you may have said, based on the past.  

Empathy turns out to be the best thing one person can give to another, the best thing we can give ourselves.  It is a question of attention– of asking questions when things are unclear, until you understand.  It is a question of time, being generous with your time to hear what the other person is really concerned about.  In my experience it is almost impossible for  a person who is niggardly with their time or attention to be a valuable friend or even a good person to talk to.

A sufficiently mature person can tolerate being ignored, forgotten, slighted, thought of last, if at all, and can make philosophical accommodations to all these things.  But when a person who claims to care for your well-being does these things, you must not tolerate it.  Care does not include these things.  

So, best to be direct.  I have told you as clearly as I can what hurts me in your actions.  I have told you again.  I have explained it on a third and fourth occasion.  I have given you every fair chance to do better.  You have not done better, you have done worse.  If you have not done worse on purpose, you did it because you were not capable of doing better.  You did not care enough.  I understand your limitations in friendship better than I did before.

You were not taught to care enough, nobody showed you how it should be done.  That is true for many people, no doubt.  It is the rare and blessed person who is shown the way to care for others.  Most of us have to learn it as we go, the best we can.

I am trying hard to be a man of peace, and I succeed more often now than before in my life.   I understand that self-hatred and confusion drive some people to act destructively, to themselves and others.  But understanding the reason for it does not give permission to anyone to act destructively.  Hitler had a horrible childhood, clearly.  But fuck Hitler.

We come in the end to the point where the only question remains:  hand open or hand closed when it bids you peace and go in good health?