It's Probably Not A Generalization To Say That We All Want To Be Forgiven. There's Something That All

it's probably not a generalization to say that we all want to be forgiven. there's something that all of us has done in our lives that we ache for forgiveness for, that we regret, that wakes us in the middle of the night as we think, god if i could just do that again, i'd make better choices this time -

i know this place. i think most of us know this place. so i *understand* why stede ran, when he got all his traumas hit, and he felt like a fraud and a failure, and monster, i get it.

but my god does it also make me want to wring his little neck. it's the way that self-hatred makes you *selfish*. the way it makes you render others petty and small in your mind. the way it lets you discount them, dismiss them, disown them.

because when stede makes the choice (and let's be clear, he very much did make a choice, he *decided* to go back to Barbados and his wife and his family) to leave ed waiting for him on that dock, he does it entirely consumed with himself, and his fears, his doubts, his trauma, his utter self-hatred, and it makes him selfish, because that's what self-hatred does. it makes people selfish and in a way, even arrogant. stede doesn't think about what ed told him, what ed shared, how ed feels - that ed is glad to be figuring himself out, that ed is happy with stede, that ed doesn't want to be blackbeard.

what stede thinks is "i ruined him". he dismisses ed's ability to know himself, to think for himself, to make decisions for himself. because stede is so consumed with his own self-hatred, his own conviction that he ruins everything that he completely runs roughshod over other people's feelings in the process of living in that hatred. he decides that he knows better than ed how ed feels. he decides that he knows better than ed what ed needs.

after all, stede hates himself, stede is useless, stede is pathetic, so ed can't really MEAN any of that, right? ed must be humoring him, or he must be tricked, or something. he can't possibly impact the people around him. they won't hurt in his absence. ed won't be hurt for being abandoned, the crew won't be sad for being ditched with izzy. he's just stede.

and in the meanwhile, there's that family, the family stede abandoned but thought would somehow exist in a stasis, in a pause, available for him to come back to - it's clear he thought mary, alma, and louis would still be as he remembered them, that it was like, in his mind, he could put a pause on the relationship and come back if needed to, without change, without growth, without *anger*...

and now that he's learned his lesson about that, i'm really, really hoping that the stede we see in season 2, the stede who's grown and seen how he impacts the people around him, is a stede prepared for how absolutely fucking pissed the love of his life is about to be.