I am.. (you guessed it!).. conflicted.

I'm back. Psych central, hello. I see you about once per year. How's it going? It's funny. I always go incognito when I log on. Haha.

A few days ago I saw a film with a similar experience to something I went through as a kid. It made me think a lot.. and the annoying part is that I haven't stopped thinking since.. and it's so obnoxious.

Basically, I remembered that when I was about 12 years old I was standing in the laundry room upset with an older family member of mine. I made a sassy remark to them, and they turned around furious at what I had said- so furious that they grabbed my arms so tight it hurt, shook me while yelling, pushed me into the door and then hit me in the face. I ran out that day. This person had been semi violent before but never had hit me. They would just do things like pulls my shirt hard to tell me it's ugly or kinda yank my arm around to pull me somewhere as a kid.. not that uncommon of stuff though.

I think in those moments, the biggest thing that stuck with me were the words. Like "do you know how much you can annoy someone until they actually want to kill you?" and "I don't love you" and then they'd feel awful and apologize. And I love them so I forgive and we move on.

The time they actually pushed and hit me was a turning point. It wasn't that odd though. Because we were all kind of violent. I would throw things as a kid out of rage and my family just worked that way in our worst moments. But throwing never actually came in contact with someone.

So.. remembering this... I can't get it out of my head this week. I am SO annoyed. I'm annoyed because I love this family member so much, and they are not like that anymore. They haven't been violent in nearly a decade. They were not "abusive". They just had a rough patch. But yet...

I thought to myself for the first time this week...
Ever since that incident I have always replayed it in my head as---
Well, I said that terrible thing to them. Makes sense as to why they were so angry. I shouldn't have said that.

This week.. as a 23 year old... I just realized... that no matter what a child says... it doesn't give an adult permission to harm that child out of pure rage.

It wasn't my fault.
Yet, that's so difficult to say and I keep going back and forth between it wasn't my fault and then "well I really shouldn't have been rude to them".

I love this person so much. So to say that they were wrong to do that hurts because it makes me a little angry at them.. and I don't want to be angry at them. It was over a decade ago. I don't want to live with bitterness from that long ago. I don't want to be angry. I just want to let it go.. but I literally keep thinking about it every moment I get and that alone is going to drive me mad. So I keep trying to distract myself and do fun things and sing songs, and watch nice things.. but everytime I'm alone that moment of terror and hurt is just sitting with me like it happened yesterday and I DONT KNOW what i'm supposed to do to get rid of it.

I could really use some thoughts.