Learning to change my response
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- March 16, 2025
- 717
Long ago my husband told me I defend people I don’t even talk to. He said I’d rather fight with him about something some obscure acquaintance said than understand why I was doing it. I call it my Holmes County reaction.
“Oh them? They didn’t really mean it that way. They’re good people.”
“Well, I’m betting they just had a bad day and said the wrong thing.”
Stop and think about it for a minute. Do we relentlessly defend people without thinking? I wrestled with this notion for 1,000 years.
The surge inside my chest to defend the indefensible was creating a barrier to the actual people I cared for, and it was time to cut out that type of language. It was festering inside me to a great degree.
Because in doing so, I was negating the actual reality my husband was dealing with, the very words that had been said straight from their mouths to his ears. My reaction (brain?) told me to say, “No, I can’t believe they’d do/say that. I don’t believe you.”
Where does this type of response come from? I think it’s a learned response mixed with religion. We were taught to always find the best in each other to a fault, to love your neighbor no matter how mean they are, to love your enemy.
And let me say that in doing so, we taught ourselves that no matter what people say, we give them the benefit of the doubt. And to that I say no more.
If someone hypothetically speaking wrote me a letter filled with hurtful, hateful things, should my response be that they had a bad day and wrote things they didn’t mean? Or did they sit down, find a pen in a dusty drawer and take the time to write out words that would hurt me? Words with malice?
That would be indefensible. I’d never defend that person.
But if someone I barely know that I used to go to church with was found out to have done something terrible? That would be hard to believe. I’d say, “Well, I just can’t believe it.” I’d want to get to the root of the matter, but why?
To give someone the “benefit of the doubt” means “the act of believing someone or trusting their explanation, even if you are not certain of their truthfulness.”
Most people deserve a chance to be heard. That’s the way it works. But after numerous times doing the same thing?
Nah, I’m good.
And for me to not believe my own loved ones because I was ingrained to find the good in everyone? I’m laying that down too. Sometimes scrubbing a learned action is more important than believing everyone is inherently good because I’ve learned they’re not.
And even typing out the words “not everyone is inherently good” has my hackles raised. Deconstructing a harmful response is good for me because it teaches me to decide who and what is important. In the current whirlwind, I will believe in those I trust — not in those who lay in wait for me to slip up.
Melissa Herrera is a reflective writer who captures the beauty and sorrow of change. With a career spanning 14 years as an opinion columnist and the publication of two books, she resides in Stark County with her husband and four cats. She writes to preserve memories. You can reach her at junkbabe68@gmail.com.