EVERYONE HURTS

No one gets through life unscathed. Everyone gets hurt eventually.
We get rejected. We get ignored. We get ridiculed. We get beaten. We get our hearts broken.
And life insists we move on, that we cope, that we adapt, the we deal with it. And we do, more often than not, by closing ourselves off from people, by enclosing our fragile, still-hurting parts behind a wall of stone that no one will ever be allowed to penetrate. We learn to live by the Irish lesson: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
We swear in silent oaths to ourselves that we will never let that happen to us again, all while blaming ourselves for it happening in the first place. We should have seen it coming. We should have known better than to trust that person. We should have realized we just aren't worthy of love, of happiness, of the life we seek.
We look at ourselves in the mirror and wonder: What in the world could anyone see in me? Why would anyone in their right mind be attracted to me? Why wouldn't she reject a loser like me?
What we often fail to realize is that the other person is hurting too, that they also have suffered hurts that drive them to act as they do. Whether by intent or by instinct, they are trying to protect themselves from pain and anguish. They, too, feel unworthy, unwanted, unloved and unlovable. In fact, they may be rejecting you in a pre-emptive strike, certain that in time you will reject them if they stay. So they reject first so that they can avoid being rejected.
If only each of us could honestly share our heart's aches and longings, pains and sufferings, hopes and dreams, triumphs and tragedies, and know that what we share is kept in a sacred trust, never to be shared with anyone else, maybe we could avoid more rejection, more hurt, more suffering by us and others.
Each and every one of us has been hurt. Each of us is scared. Each of us is afraid to open ourselves to yet another rejection. Each and every one of us is capable of an amazing, deep and powerful love. We want to share that love with someone, the right someone.
To do so, however, requires us to let down our guard, to knock down our walls, to open our hearts up to another, to be willing to be hurt and rejected again.
It can be an awful lot to ask. But the reward is well worth the risk. And the potential rejection.