When you have hurt someone that you love, your world comes crashing down around you. You see yourself being the worst possible version of who you are. Your eyes cloud over and your ears ring with the silence that you have made where there was once joy. You want to take it back. You want to know that it can be fixed. It is torture to see the person you love with a face that is crumpled in sadness and anger, and was like a joyous, vibrant being. You beg to allowed the fix it, but you cannot.
I have found myself here all too often. I have beaten myself to a pulp for the things that at the time I felt so right about but, in retrospect, know were so very wrong. It may be that we all find ourselves there, but it does not feel that way. It is a lonely solitude where comfort flickers out of reach.
Then you curse that you are feeling sorry for yourself because you should just be feeling the hurt that you have inflicted upon another. Is there anything that you can not manipulate into making about yourself?
Why can’t I separate the hurt from the blame? Am I incapable of feeling empathy without injecting myself into the equation? I don’t think I am because I caused the hurt. How can I feel for someone’s pain, when it has come from me, without holding myself to account.
You say things like, “I didn’t mean it that way.”
And a tear-stained voice answers, “Yes, you did.”
It rattles in your mind like a projectile that you are cruel. That maybe you are naturally that way. But you don’t want to be naturally cruel. You just can’t stop thinking about how wrong it was to hurt the person that you love.
Because there are different kinds of love, there are different kinds of hurt. There is the hurt of disappointment, when you did not live up to the expectations that the person you love has or had for you. Hurt can change expectations. Once you have disappointed someone, there is the possibility that you will do it again. Sometimes, there is even the expectation that you will do it again. This is difficult because the expectations that someone you love has for you are often high. Can that person still love you even if you cannot live up to the expectations that your love engendered in them? Can you still be loved in spite of your flaws? More projectiles that carom around your head and heart.
There is the hurt of betrayal. This pain comes with different projectiles. If you know that you have committed an act of betrayal; if you know that you harbor feelings of betrayal; if your betrayal was deliberate, you have spit in the face of love. The once pure love is broken or tarnished and you understand, painfully, that it can never be as it once was. That you can never be what you once were to the person that you love.
Forgiveness washes you but there is always some of the residue that lingers. There is always the longing for the time before the betrayal. Perhaps you can say that your new love is stronger because you have been able to forgive, but until you can accept being forgiven, that strength is fragile.
If you love, you must accept that you will be hurt, but you must also accept that you will be the one who does the hurting. This part is harder for me. I ask myself why I need to explore the mystery of love and hurt. Is it possible that you love someone more after they have hurt you?
I do not understand why this is true but I have experienced it. Is it because if you are hurt, you and have forgiven that hurt, you will be given more latitude when it is your turn to do the hurting and the asking for forgiveness? Is being hurt somehow banking your pain so that when you hurt someone you feel that you deserve forgiveness?
I do not know the answers to these questions. They revive hurt when I ask them. Perhaps hurt is a stern teacher of reality.