Residual Thunder

People really like to hear the faults in people.

So, here’s mine. I am afraid of good things. I don’t know how to sit inside happiness without bracing for impact. When something matters, I build walls instead of breathing. I get scared of the loss before there’s even evidence it’s coming, so I start preparing for endings that haven’t happened yet. I make decisions I think will protect the good, when in reality they create harm. I confuse anticipation with wisdom. I mistake self-protection for foresight, and fear for intuition. And yeah. I fuck up. Repeatedly.

When I start anticipating these endings that haven’t happened, trying to outmaneuver loss, I tell myself that preemptive damage will hurt less than grief that arrives unannounced. It never works.

And when I realize I’ve messed up, everything in me goes into overdrive. I want to fix it. I want to rewind. I want to understand every detail of what went wrong. I replay conversations. I reread messages. I dissect moments that didn't feel significant at the time but suddenly carry weight. I become hyper-fixated on restoring whatever closeness existed before.

Every effort to mend only seems to break more. Urgency doesn't leave room for patience, and fear doesn't leave room for clarity. When you're operating from panic, everything becomes reactive.

I don't want to bring storms into places that offered shelter.

I think sometimes the people we hurt want to see us admit our flaws because they want us to hurt too. Not always out of cruelty. Pain wants company. Sometimes it's because accountability feels incomplete unless the person who caused the damage feels it just as deeply. There's a strange comfort in knowing someone else is sitting in the wreckage with you. Two people standing in the aftermath. Admitting something broke, and neither of them pretending it didn’t.

I’ve had people walk out of my life because of their own choices, their own wounds, their own inability to stay.

Somewhere in all of that leaving, I learned love meant endurance. That connection meant tolerating abandonment. That if someone left, it must mean I wasn’t enough to make them stay.

Over time, I learned how to make myself smaller. Someone who over functions emotionally. Who will bend herself into smaller shapes if it means keeping people close. Someone who internalizes endings as personal failures. That lesson taught me to brace for departure, expecting endings even in the midst of something good.

So now, when I have good people in my life, I go into protection mode. I want to do whatever I can to avoid losing them. I overanalyze and overextend, trying to control outcomes that aren’t mine. I live in future grief instead of present connection.

The cruel irony is that in trying to prevent loss, I sometimes invite it.

In the past few months, I've made decisions that led people to make choices that were better for themselves. And those choices didn't include me.

I know what I did. I’ve replayed everything enough to understand where I went wrong, and while external circumstances influenced me, I still made those decisions. I never blamed my actions on what happened to me. I only shared that it made my life harder.

I never meant to hurt anyone, but intention doesn't change outcome. I'm not continuing life believing what I did was okay. I sit with it, I carry it, and replay it. Accountability doesn't disappear just because regret exists.

I don't blame anyone for stepping away. I was rain at their party. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. Just heavy. Unpredictable. My fear leaked into spaces that deserved light. I tried to protect connection and ended up damaging it.

And now I sit with the consequences. Not as punishment, but as responsibility.

Growth doesn’t always happen inside reconciliation. It happens quietly, alone, without applause, learning how not to bring storms into spaces that offered shelter. It isn’t pretty. Accountability isn’t poetic. Sometimes it’s simply choosing to face what you’ve done and decide to do better, even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when there’s no guarantee anyone will stay, and especially when you don’t get the ending you hoped for.

Loving people eventually has to mean letting them exist without gripping them too tightly. Healing has to mean learning how to stay, even when your nervous system is screaming for control.

People have a hard time forgiving someone who hurt them. That makes sense. You don't risk letting someone wound you twice. You don't owe access to someone who caused damage. Healing doesn't require reconciliation. I understand that now. There’s a specific kind of grief that comes with realizing you became unsafe, knowing your presence was no longer something someone could afford, and accepting that your actions pushed people toward distance.

But I’ve also seen firsthand the ways that people can change when they truly care about someone.

In all the things I’ve done wrong, I also know this about myself. I am a good person. Not in a perfect way. Not in a harmless way. In the human way.

I have people in my life who have been with me for years. They've seen different versions of me. Different seasons. Different mistakes. The ones who stayed didn't stay because I was easy, they stayed because they know my heart, even when my delivery is messy. They've been with me through my worst moments.

The people who stayed through my worst moments let the truth of who they knew me to be guide their choices. They took the time to understand the why behind my actions, the depths of me that others might never see. They didn’t let the voices of others dictate my worth or steer their choice to stay by my side.

They know I’ll defend myself to whatever length I have to. That I don’t take disrespect quietly. If someone challenges me, I meet it head-on. If they try to chase the storm, I’m already halfway there. Still, they know that when I strike, there’s usually something beneath it. I'm not rude for entertainment, and I don't find cruelty fun. Almost every sharp word I let slip, I wish I could take it back five seconds later.

That's the exhausting part. Living in the space between "someone needs to say something" and "maybe I should have let it go." It's hard to know when honesty is necessary and when silence would have been kinder. Because sometimes what you're saying is true. And people don't like truth when it sounds like criticism.

I don’t speak up to start fights. I speak because I care, but caring isn’t always quiet. Sometimes it drizzles, sometimes it spills, and sometimes it pours down louder than I intend.

Being a good person doesn't mean you never hurt anyone. It means you take responsibility when you do.

Everyone makes mistakes. Even the kindest rays of sunshine strike lightning.

What hurts is that sometimes the rain comes too early, and one strike carries all the weight of what came before.

I also understand how easy it is to become the problem in someone else's story. Storm clouds don't form for fun. They don't appear out of nowhere. They build slowly, pressure stacking on pressure, unspoken feelings collecting in quiet places. Still, when you're the extra one, the added one, you're usually the first to go.

People choose simplicity over understanding. Groups move on faster than they ask questions. Once someone decides who you are, everything you say gets filtered through that version of you.

People underestimate the power of a conversation and transparency. When you try to fix things, it can feel like people fight you. Not because they don't want peace, but because changing their perspective would mean admitting there's more to the story. So, everything you do gets read in the worst possible way. That doesn't mean they're wrong for protecting themselves. Complexity rarely survives conflict.

I strike like lightning in these situations because I already feel like the extra. I feel replaceable. Peripheral. Like there isn’t room for my voice unless I force it in. One wrong move, and I’m done.

I don’t always know how to express hurt in real time. I wait until it stacks up, turns into pressure, and leaks out sideways. I let silence do the damage first, then wonder why my honesty sounds like anger.

I don't believe I'm blameless. I also don't believe I'm a villain. I believe I'm human, capable of love and harm in the same breath. And sometimes accountability means accepting that even if your intentions were real, even if your pain was valid, even if there's context, people still get to walk away.

That's the hardest part. Not being misunderstood, but rather being unrecoverable. Being misunderstood and accused though, comes in a close second.

People think I don't take responsibility because I don't post about it. I don't broadcast every regret. I don't turn my mistakes into captions. I process privately. I sit with what I've done long before I ever put words on a screen. Accountability doesn't always look loud. Sometimes it looks like losing sleep, replaying moments, having hard conversations with yourself, and carrying the weight of knowing you hurt people you cared about.

I've been a storm cloud parading through people's lives. Not because I wanted to be, but because my own shadows found their voice. I moved through spaces full of light, leaving a trail of wind and rain behind. I reached for connection and found only distance, tried to protect what I loved and ended up bruising it instead.

I am aware of the edges I bring, the ways my fear and intensity flood over. Reconciling all of my truths isn’t easy. The only way we learn is to set our sun on fire. We let the people at the center of our lives feel the heat of our mistakes. Then we ride our storms over them, letting the fire burn out in the downpour. We learn from what burns, and we show our change when we’re given the chance. We put it into practice. And still, even after the scorch, I want to be someone who offers safety, who makes space for connection without demanding it, who loves without expecting perfection in return. Being human means holding both sides at once, and the measure of my heart isn’t in flawlessness, but in how I make space for others to feel seen, even when I am far from whole.

This isn't performative.

It's ownership of the residual thunder.