Circling the Same Story

I spend a lot of time thinking about apologies.

Not the simple kind. Not the kind where someone says, “I did this. It hurt you. I’m sorry.” Those are rare, clean things. They land like a stone dropped into water—clear impact, a few ripples, then quiet.

I am talking about the other kind that take years. The kind that arrives in fragments.

The kind where you watch someone slowly learn the language of responsibility the way children learn to speak.

Babbling.
Then nonsense words.
Then almost-words.
Then one or two real ones mixed in with something that sounds suspiciously like Simlish.

Eventually a sentence appears.

That is where I find myself now.

For a long time I felt like I was being overwritten. Not disagreed with—overwritten. As if my experience only existed if it fit inside someone else’s version of events. Conversations would start with something that happened to me and somehow end with a monologue about shame, anxiety, guilt, or self-esteem. The spotlight never stayed on the harm towards me for long. It drifted back to the person explaining themselves.

If you have ever been in that position, you know the strange exhaustion of it. You begin to feel like you are not allowed to speak unless you are helping the other person process their emotions.

And if you happen to understand people well—if you can see the patterns in behaviour, the wounds underneath the defensiveness—you end up becoming the interpreter. The translator. The unpaid therapist.

You can understand why they behave the way they do.
You explain it to them.
You help them see themselves.

And somewhere along the way you realise you have become the emotional infrastructure of the relationship.

That realisation is a strange one.

Because the instinct that led you there was not malicious. It was compassionate. I have always believed that people act the way they do for a reason. If someone behaves badly, there must be something underneath it—fear, insecurity, hurt. If you understand the reason, maybe you can help them find their way out of it.

My best friend calls this part of me “Reverse House.” Instead of assuming everyone is lying and broken, I assume everyone has some good buried somewhere and I just have to find it.

I have been told that this is a beautiful instinct but also a dangerous one.

Because understanding someone’s wounds does not mean you are responsible for healing them.

And if you are very good at understanding people, you will eventually discover that many of them are quite happy to let you do the emotional labour indefinitely.

That is how you end up burnt out from helping.
Not unhappy, exactly. Just tired.
So tired that some mornings the most appealing thing in the world is staying in bed for another hour. Or rescheduling something just to sleep a little longer.

The strange part is realising why.

For years I poured into other people’s cups. Advice, listening, interpretation, patience, emotional processing. I did it because I cared. I did it because I believed that if I understood someone deeply enough, something good would come from that understanding.

And eventually a very uncomfortable question appeared.

When was someone going to refill mine?
Had anyone?
Would I even allow it if they tried?

That question told me more about myself than I was ready to know.

Because receiving help is a very different skill from giving it. Giving keeps you in control. Receiving requires trust. Vulnerability. Letting someone see you when you are not the one holding everything together.

Stillness, in other words.

And stillness is frightening if you have spent years navigating storms.

When your nervous system is used to crisis, calm can feel suspicious. Like the refrigerator stopped humming and suddenly the whole kitchen is too quiet. You start looking for something to fix, something to reorganise, something to build.

In my case, that usually means my house becomes a construction zone.

Calm period? Excellent. Time to rearrange every room. Collect used Kallax shelves and turn them into something else. Tape paint swatches to the walls. Label everything. Then change it all again once I know where everything goes.

My family has learned to recognise the signs.

If I am drilling into furniture or redesigning a room, things must be going well.

This time the project was smaller.

I turned a Kallax shelf into a Monster High dollhouse for my daughter.
Pipe-cleaner hangers for the closets.
Coffin mirrors.
Bat-shaped hooks.
Spiderweb curtains knitted while listening to Narnia.
Tiny crocheted afghans for coffin beds.

It took hours and it was glorious.

And somewhere in the middle of making miniature furniture, something became clear.

Pain and darkness are part of life, but they are not the whole story. They are ingredients, like ginger in a curry. Too much and everything becomes overwhelming. Too little and life feels bland.

The trick, I think, is transformation.

For years I felt like the landfill where people dumped their emotional rubbish. Trauma, confusion, hopelessness—bags and bags of it, left for me to sort through.

But landfills do not stay rubbish heaps forever.

Given enough time, enough turning of the soil, enough oxygen and attention, waste becomes compost. Rot becomes fertile ground.

New life grows there.

Once the compost is ready, you do not actually need more garbage trucks.

Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is close the gate and let the garden grow.