50

50 Do you reflect on past conversations and experiences and analyze what you did wrong? (04/14/2023)

I do. 99% of the time, it's always the same problem. I don't say what I wanted to say. I always come up short. Sometimes, I stumble upon my words, avoid direct eye contact while I am speaking, and sometimes, I don't say anything at all even though I want to voice my opinion. In each analysis, I keep telling myself that I should speak up but I keep making excuses. I am scared of being seen as annoying or weird by others so I just stay quiet. It's a lot better to be known as being quiet rather than the weird one.
However, all of my attempts at self-analysis and improvement in my conversations show that I don't want to be quiet at all. I don't want to be seen as the weird one either. I want to be the smart and popular who can speak persuasively to someone regardles of whether they agree with me or not.
I regret my silence the most, not the words I have spoken.
However, there were a few instances where I have said things that I still deeply regret to this day. It was 9 years ago. Me, Joel Dai, and Ela Didi were just hanging out in our bedroom. My older sister (Ela Didi) was talking about dying her hair with a non-natural color like blue or green. Me and Joel Dai start making fun of her and hurled stupid insults at her like "you are going to look like a clown" or "nobody likes you". While spitting insults one after another, they kept going out of hand until I said, "nobody will care when you kill yourself". That struck a nerve in her and her playful face turned into anger. As her eyes began to water, she locked herself in her own room. Both of us apologized for being assholes to her. Deep down, we were also scared that she would end up killing herself because she had a bad history of self-harm and depression. She didn't speak to me for a month. While our relationship has gotten a lot better since then, I still regret saying that to this day.
Looking back, she played off all the other insults with such playfulness that she seemed super-confident and didn't take things too seriously. However, my one line stroke too close to her heart. I said one of the worst things you could say to someone with depression and past history of self-harm. I believe another sincere apology is due with a long conversation. On one hand, I don't want to reopen her scars from 9 years ago. On the other hand, maybe I can help both of us move forward from that incident.

Maybe I am a bad person, I just didn't know it.