An Apology and Forgiveness

I’ve been feeling more and more nervous about if Chap and I can sustain and grow what we have.  It is obvious we both have strong feelings for each other, but the distance creates a big, ocean-sized obstacle.  And this makes his nervous.  Which in turn makes me nervous.  So I’ve been trying more and more to “helpfully” suggest options of ways to spend more time together.  Except I’ve had a sneaky suspicion that this was coming from my fear that the distance between us would be too much to overcome. And that my helpful suggestions were a disguised attempt at controlling the situation to have my desired outcome.

To be fair, it is all coming from a place of good intentions. That place where you know you both want the same thing and you want to do whatever you can to make it happen.  However, as much as I can claim that the intention to find a way to be together comes from a place of love, it is laced fear of not being together that is leading to so many “helpfully” controlling suggestions.  

As this realization hit, I felt awful. I immediately wanted to run to Chap and apologize for my transgressions.  But I stopped in my tracks and thought, how lucky is he to have me -- who cares so very much and who uses her super power of problem solving to figure out ways to make the distance a much smaller obstacle.  Why am I judging myself guilty of committing a terrible crime against him, when in each moment, I tried my best to clear my head and my heart and to act from love?  Even if those actions were still laced with fear, I attempted to act in the best possible way.

So I decided that an apology and forgiveness were needed, but in a different way: my apology to him is to trust that he is strong enough to find a way to make this work, if it is right.  And my forgiveness to myself is to not apologize outloud for something that I did the best I could at the time, with the best of intentions.