"Nobody in my family wants me to marry you anyway." These words were uttered by my friend's fiance (now husband) two weeks before their wedding day, during a particularly bad argument. That was 8 years ago and to this day, she cannot get those words out of her head. It turned out to be only one of his sisters voicing her concern for unspecified reasons and regardless of the years that have since passed, those words still find a way of sneaking into my friend's head at the most inopportune moments. The husband has obviously apologized numerous times since, for uttering those inexcusably thoughtless words. And yet, the words were said and cannot be unsaid, and she cannot erase them regardless of how hard she tries.
My best friend from childhood uttered these words to me at their house, as a reason for wanting a second child: "All only children are egoists." When I choked on my food and reminded her that I happen to be an only child, she said, "yes, well, you are also an egoist." After a heated exchange that included me shoving the meaning of the word in her face, she finally apologized. I forgave her. And yet, whenever I talk to her now I get flashbacks of her saying those words to me. Of all people. Whether there is any truth to those words is beside the point.
Somehow it still surprises me how careless and tactless we can be with our words. As if we weren't bad enough already, that carelessness spiraled completely out of control with the arrival of the Internet and social media. People hurl their words, their hate, at the screen, forgetting that on the other side are real human beings, with real feelings. They think that words are only words but they are not. Words hurt, words stick around, particularly when they come out of the mouths of the people whom we love, whom we are supposed to trust.
Trust is a fickle thing. It can be broken for a number of reasons, like when one no longer feels safe enough to trust with their secrets, to trust that they won't be thrown back at them as a key to winning an argument. It obviously doesn't take something as awful as cheating to break trust between spouses. It can take something as "silly" as words. Words, my friends, cannot be unspoken. Choose them wisely, choose them gingerly.
For obvious reasons, the people who hurt us most tend to be the ones we love and care about the most. I imagine feeling hurt and betrayed by a person we love can make us feel like children might feel when they first discover that their parents are not the perfect being they imagine them to be — shocked, disappointed, and maybe even a little sick to the stomach.
How can we protect ourselves without shutting down our feelings and becoming cynical, slowly detaching ourselves until we realize we no longer have any true friends left in our lives?
I posted something to that effect on Facebook the other day in hopes of gaining insight from my friends. Turns out that it's a rather tricky question. I did get a couple of responses. One was to the effect of, "it's possible but with lots of practice," and the other said that there is no need to protect ourselves because those painful experiences make us who we are. I agree with both statements but also think that the last could be a dangerous thing because "who we are" can easily be that very cynic I mentioned earlier.
Based on what I read, it looks like we are once again to be held accountable for our actions as well as our reactions. As for me, I've gotten better at the words but still need a lot of work on how I perceive them. What about you?
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