Broken Paths

Earlier this year I said some of the most hateful words I’ve ever spoken to someone I cared about.  I told one of my cousins, a mother of two little boys, that she was a bad mother.  Hateful words and text messages just piled up after that was said comparing who was a horrible mother and why.  We stopped speaking after that and have only recently made up.

In order to understand the impact of those words a person has to 1) be a parent and 2) care about the opinion of the person saying those five words.  When someone you care about and trust tells you that you are a bad mother, a woman cringes inside.  You could be the best mother in the world, and once someone speaks those words you begin to question yourself.  You look at your past actions, words you’ve spoken to your child, and those moments when you lose your cool and yell at your kids.  Should I have not disciplined my child?  Was I too hard on them for something so small?  I didn’t mean to make them cry—how could I have done it differently?  All of these questions and more amass in your head and then the anger comes. 

Anger is such an ugly emotion.  It will make you do and say things that you know will hurt the other person, but you don’t care.  You want them to hurt as much as you were hurt.  I wanted my cousin to hurt.  So I said exactly what I knew would affect her the most—you’re a bad mother.  I still feel sick about the moment when those unspeakable words left my mouth.

The only thing left to say is I’m sorry.  While I know that doesn’t seem to cover the extent of my regret over what was said and that it will never make up for the hurt caused, it’s the only course left to me now.  Even though we have mended our relationship somewhat, I still notice the void that wasn’t there before.  There is no good way to apologize, but hopefully airing out the true feelings about what happened will move us in the right direction on this broken path.