Relationship Rescue: Does Making Amends Always Depend On The Right Time For You?
Was I standing still? It moved right past me with such lightening speed. I know I didn’t feel it and I can’t describe it to you because I couldn’t see or touch it. I just know about it based on the changes to my body, face and hair. My children at one time were infants, toddlers, adolescents, teens and now adults. I can’t say I was left behind, because it . . . time enveloped me as it passed with each breath I took. Now, when looking into any mirror I gauge its aftermath as I move towards the inevitable, the moment that will be the last time I will see myself or the remnants of my life.
I waited for the right day to come to apologize for my mistakes, whether verbal or otherwise towards others, my family and friends. My mind always advised me that now was not the right time. You should wait another day, another moment, another time where the conditions for your makeup would be better or more palatable in your mind towards the other person. The suggested times from our mind’s conversation with us never comes. If it does, we didn’t recognize it and decided to opt out of making amends as we worked to conjure up a reason to alleviate our presence to avoid connecting with another.
I kept waiting, but the right time never came. Time, it just went without purpose except to just move on as it extracts its toll on all of us. Time flows along like an invisible unseen fog only distinguishable and discernible by our age and how our children have suddenly blossomed from dependent infants to independent adults. No explanation exists that can decipher its aftermath. It cannot be seen when it happens, but only after it leaves its telling mark on us.
It would be great to have the ability to measure its visits or even temper them with a schedule of sorts, but that can never be because life is just designed that way. How do you define time? It could be when you understood you could no longer support the weight of your child in your lap that it was time for them to stop wanting the safety of your cuddling, but to fend for themselves. Or even when they no longer initiated the snug embraces you grew accustomed to as you sent them love that seemed to seep deep into their soul. It was for no reason, only just because.
The coldness that now exists between you and them, it’s because the right time never came to make up, to make amends. So, we let it be. We learn to accept and live out our lives without those that add meaning to our mere existence. We decide in our mind its best this way as we keep up with one another through hearsay from others.
An unknown author penned the words, “Time is priceless, yet it costs us nothing. You can do anything you want with it, but own it. You can spend it, but you can’t keep it. Once you’ve lost it, there’s no getting it back. It’s just gone”. It’s like water trickling through your hands as you rush to take a sip.
All this time, during your life, you’ve made the decision in your head to be angry at people you were once close to. It’s time that you could have spent being happy, but now it’s just time that’s gone that can’t be retrieved or even allowed a do over. As people we waste a lot of time holding onto anger, but it’s actually a choice we make to avoid feeling uncomfortable if we have to say, I’m sorry that I hurt you.
We decide in our head instead of our heart, that now is not the right time while we wait patiently for more time, the right time, another time to decide when to make amends to someone we love. For now, time continues to move on in our lives, but the time to nurture those relationships with the people who matter most is now, but even that can’t be because it’s been postponed because of a one moment in time.
