The words of an old song came to mind when he said them aloud, as if the words were an excuse for his bad behavior and the suggestion about love, a buffer to my aggravation with him. You always hurt the one you love… It had become his well-worn phrase and when I closed my thoughts off from him, I wondered why when love should be a safety net, instead it was an exposure of vulnerabilities.
Perhaps one should not speak aloud of what could hurt the most so no one then might use that very tool to hurt out of spite or in an angry flare-up. Maybe that would work, but then is there a certain dishonesty or a prevention of intimacy by keeping that kind of secret. On the other hand, how many people are a completely open book? Maybe no one really knows anyone else.
Looking over the assorted relationships of my life, I have sometimes found the unhappy words of that song to be true in cases of the closest people in my circles. It is how we react to hard experiences, not the damaging actions or words themselves, that count in our personal growth I’ve heard, over the years. Often the offensive persons have no ill intent, but something just hits me as a painful and it is a wound I really have to work hard to staunch. The question is how to duck from an onslaught, or better yet, just keep moving forward and staying busy as if nothing happened.
They say that time heals all wounds, but I have found that it does not heal anything, rather as the days and years layer over each other, prayer for strength and forging ahead keep the engine running.
ponderingalongthemilkyway 