Back to the Hedgehog

Do you remember how many people you have ever hurt in your whole life? Of course not. If you do you are either saint or insane… People are very easy to hurt. The wrong word at the wrong time is all that takes for someone to fall apart. You might not even want to hurt that person, you might have actually tried to help them, but… People are very easy to hurt…

 

I would like to think that on average I hurt less people… I am keeping distance. Not only because I don’t wan to hurt them, but also because I am afraid of being hurt back. Stuck between being afraid of hurting and being afraid of being hurt, it’s impossible for me to meet new people. I tend to be very… Judgmental? Maybe not the right word but I suppose it’s close enough. I tend to test their opinions and thoughts, to understand them better, to let them get closer. It’s not something I prepare upfront. The conversation just flows here and there and suddenly we end up arguing if environmental activists should focus on fighting meat production or oil production… The right answer is both btw…

 

With time, as my subconscious judgment gets to an end, the people end up in certain relationship and closeness to me. Most ends up far away, safe from being hurt by me, and I’m safe from them hurting me. Those that are closest to me, well… They get hurt, and I get hurt by them…

 

Hedgehog’s dilemma… To get close to someone, you must get hurt by them in some way. Even people who are in happy relationships, whether they realize it or not, end up hurting each other in some way, and it might be superficial and not important, of course… But it’s inevitable. The trick in finding relationships that are meaningful is, to find people who hurt you in a way that will not make you fall apart and who will do their best to be with you, without hurting you, and when even that fails, they will show kindness to you and help you get up.

 

I don’t believe in meaningful relationships without some kind of pain. Not just because I haven’t seen any, no matter how much some couples try to pretend there is no pain, but also because to me it’s impossible by the nature of human existence. Maybe some might call me cynic because of that… And maybe… Maybe I’m just wrong…

 

Only few people ever actually left me, and I left even less then that… Maybe that’s simply because of the numbers… Not many people can leave me if I never let them get close. Out of those who did left me, only one was a genius surprise, but that was all my mistake… Or was it “nobody’s fault”? If I saw the scene from the other point of view, maybe I wouldn’t be that harsh on myself, maybe I would have called it nobody’s fault, as so many life’s suffering are… But I feel it was my fault, maybe not only mine, but mostly mine…

 

Today someone left me again, someone who was quite close, though in a strange position. She left me because she felt she was hurting me, and yes, I did feel hurt sometimes and I’m sure I hurt her sometimes… But overall, I thought we were good. Some similar topics, some care for each other. We talked almost daily, even though we were half the planet apart… But she felt she’s hurting me too much and that I hurt her too… I would understand if she felt hurt by me so much she couldn’t stay, but, as I understood it, she wanted to leave, because she didn’t want to hurt me, even though her presence did not make me fall apart. I still can’t quite understand it…

 

Is it really so strange to expect some, manageable level of pain in personal relationship of any kind? Is it? Do people honestly believe there should be no problems at all?

 

What scares me is that I am not that much upset… I was at first, a bit in shock. Now though… The emptiness that’s in my heart seem to have swallow even that…  My mind is now more focused on something else… Someone else. But still… I should feel more from her leaving.

 

Maybe my heart turned into stone while I wasn’t paying attention… Maybe… But if so… Why am I feeling so much anger at people I haven’t even met… People who hurt someone I have never even met… You see…

 

As few people as I did hurt, I did hurt a few. I am very good at seeing into people’s fears, I am terrifyingly good at it actually, should I choose to… I have never chosen to use that fear against them, but there were times when my subconscious and flaws got better of me… I do carry cross of my own making and so I did spend over the years many days and nights listening and reading words of broken people through out the internet… From Japan to Argentina… The same… Ability that lets me understand people’s fears also lets me help them to escape those fears, if only for few moments… And that is something I did chose to do many times in my life…

 

The thing is… You can listen to a crying girl and try to console her, as she is telling you how she was rapped or abused by someone she loved, only so many times before you find yourself you can’t keep doing that anymore… And so I stopped… I stopped listening… Until yesterday… I jumped straight into the pit of pain… Sexual and emotional abuse on a scale I’ve seen only few times before…

 

Was there any point to this? Or did I just become addicted to it? To the rage I get when I read those words… The need to destroy whoever was responsible and to safe those who got hurt… But those responsible almost never get stopped and those hurt only get a bit better over time and only in right conditions… Or is it my pain I am addicted to? My own suffering reading those words over and over… Am I doing it to feel something myself?

 

No… I’m doing it to feel close to someone…

 

As I’m sitting in my room, surrounded by PCs and garbage I keep forgetting to take out… I want to feel close to someone… But I can’t… For one reason or another, I am alone… And pain people share to the silence of the internet is personal. It’s real… It makes me feel like I am with people…

 

My heart is not made of stone… It’s just lonely, and it’s hiding that it is hurt…