Wearing It.
I had a comfort food laden liquor flowing dinner with a good friend of mine last night who was interested in saving my heart from ruin. I have recently been heart broken. And I dare say again – because this isn’t the first type of heartbreak of it’s kind. But my friend gave me some interesting, new advice that she recieved from a new acquaintance of hers.
In the matters of the heart and hurt… he suggests that women stop being all “strong” and hiding the pain and “rising above it all” and just buckle down and allow themselves to hurt. Wear the hurt in all it’s glory. Feel every wave of pain and embrace it. Don’t push it away or say that you’re over it if you’re not really. Take every hit and don’t mask the hurt. And he recommends this path of action because it’s the only way you can truly heal. You can’t heal if you hide the hurt – you can only heal if you allow it to heal. Which starts by truly feeling the hurt. If you tell yourself you’re not really hurt, you’re only masking the wound. Not medicating. You need to take every pill in the antibiotics prescription to be fully rid of any virus. Not half the bottle. Not down to 3 pills. The WHOLE THING. If we half ass this process, we carry the hurt into the next relationship and make the next person we might possibly love suffer the injuries of our last relationship – and they may very well NOT deserve to.
I’ve never heard THAT advice before. I’ve heard all the staples. “Suck it up.” “You’ll be fine, just date someone else.” “Don’t sit here and cry – c’mon, let’s go to the club and pick up some men…” Anything to hide the fact that true hurt is taking place.
I’ve even done it here on this blog. I could have the world believing that I married the singularly most perfect human being in the world who loves me beyond compare and would never hurt me EVER. When the truth is, I’m beginning to be convinced, only a year and some into the marriage, that I made a HUGE error. One that had red flags waving from about 5 years ago. But having the audacity of hope… I proceeded full steam.
Let me tell you something about hope. It fucking sucks sometimes. You sit there and hope and get your hopes let down and it’s such an illusion sometimes when you have COLD HARD FACTS before you with which you may want to make your decisions. I truly believe that God puts the facts in front of you and sits there, crossing his fingers, PRAYING that you’ll use your OWN better judgment and make the decision for yourself. But we squeeze our eyes tight, make a wish on a falling star and HOPE that it all comes true.
So beginning now… I’m going to wear it. I AM HURTING. My husband has hurt me … AGAIN. And continues to twist the knife by not doing all in his power to make me KNOW that I’m the only one for him. Instead he buries his head in the sand and prays this blows over like the last time. Instead of FIGHTING FOR ME with every molecule of his being. So. I’m wearing this hurt.
You worded that soooo much better than I could ever explain it…..and now I have to follow my same advice with S.