Love Among the Damaged Those who need love the most will almost never find it. That is the coldest and cruelest truth of human existence. It burns like ice. No one needs love more than those who’ve been deprived of it, yet no one has more difficulty getting it. And no one finds it easier to lose it, either. It’s like a romance comedy that abruptly turns into a horror movie again and again and again. When you’ve been exposed to extreme cruelty—or savage indifference—early on, your life is a repeated waking nightmare. If you grew up deprived of love, you will most likely grow old the same way. If you grew up bathed in love, you will bask like a giggling baby in the sunshine until you die. And once you are set on your path, it is nearly impossible to bend the road. It’s like damaged souls have been denied an essential nutrient their whole lives and grew up with withered limbs. They may be starved for love because of one…or two…or twenty bad and mangled romances, but most likely it was their parents who smashed their emotions beyond repair. A bad romance or two can be damaging but not incapacitating. But if your parents denied you love while you were still developing, you will carry that damage like a tombstone around your neck until it pulls you down into the grave. It’s not fair, but only fools expect life to be fair. It’s like a healthcare system where the perfectly healthy get rolled into the hospital on golden wheelchairs, while the crippled and maimed hobble around outside in the grimy streets, desperately trying to heal themselves. Occasionally…not often, but occasionally…one of the untreated patients howling in pain outside in the streets will cross paths with someone very much like themselves. They chance upon one another like two little wrecked baby birds in exile from the thorny loveless nests that spawned them. And they both realize—in their bones—that normal people could never relate to their damage and could thus never truly love them. And this is why these two damaged baby birds fall quickly and recklessly in love with one another. It’s like that moment in The Wizard of Oz where everything is suddenly in color. Hearts that have been broken from birth will love more fiercely than anyone in the world when given the chance. It’s a love like no other. A love that burns so hard.Too hard. It will burn brightly at first, and then it will burn everything to ashes. You slipped inside a safe bubble for one another, and then you wind up suffocating inside it. Your safe bubble becomes a torture chamber. You came together to protect each other, but you end up eating one another alive. You’d created a little life together and now you both seek to stab it to death. You bared your ugliest wounds to one another, and now you peck at them like dueling buzzards. You know each other’s sore spots and you pounce on them. You pick each other’s bones clean. It’s like you both emerged from the ocean’s darkest depths for a brief gasp of air, then up came the old familiar sea monsters to drag you down to the deep again. The sense of betrayal burns like bleach in the face. This person who loved you like no one else ever has now hates you like no one else ever has. And it’s all because no one ever taught either of you how to love in the first place. You were only schooled in how to hate. Hatred is only love denied, and people who’ve had easy lives never realize that. They think hatred is something consciously willed. They can’t understand why anyone would be so silly as to hate in such a love-filled world. They can perhaps be forgiven for their myopia, because they’ve never known any other way. I say all this because I know it personally. I know it all too well...
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 12:16:51 +0000
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