In every relationship you will ever have there will at some point be a sense of bartering between the conscious decision to either love or tolerate the other person. These moments arrive to us through the countless hardships and challenges life brings our way. Some relationships will falter where others will soar. And in those moments we will either decide the value of those relationships by revering their worth or devaluing them within our hearts.
So why do we love others and yet find ourselves in a position where love seems to fail?
For me the question has always been more about why others could ever really love me...
From birth we start out a blank slate. Every idea of what love is and what it will ever mean to us is written upon our souls and upon our flesh from that first breath. Infants who experience love from the womb show that they expect it upon arrival. Their desire to cling to the woman who carried them all those months is evident not only in their helplessness but in their desire for that affection. Separation becomes more agonizing than hunger itself. This is for many the first inclination, despite never registering in our memories, of what love will mean for us.
But what if love was refused to us from those early stages? What if the person we were meant to cling to offered nothing but hatred from the start?
For me that came from my father. One of the few people I came into this world seemingly believing was supposed to offer me love and comfort and yet what I received was absolute abhorrence. Where gentle words could had soothed the pain inflicted by his own hand, I was guided toward a view of myself that lingers to this day.
Life isn't fair.
The fairy tales better fathers would had offered didn't happen for me. The happy ever after was hidden beneath bruises and scars that time itself dared not heal. What view I was given of myself was that of worthlessness and helplessness. Through hedonistic barbarism I was given a standard against which I was to judge myself, and all because at that age I couldn't had known it was wrong.
For others this standard against which we measure ourselves arrives to us in much the same way. Through it may not had been through that exact method, we obtain a view of ourselves by how those we love reflect it upon us. Their every action, every misspoken word, these are the things that build up a chart in our mind that tells us from that point forward just how worthy of love we really are. It doesn't matter that this standard set for us is flawed... it only matters to us because at that moment it is the only one we have got.
Moving forward in life becomes like navigating our way through a battlefield. For me it was one long path of trying to make sure other people, no matter how much I loved them, couldn't hurt me like that again. This was often achieved by simply reminding myself that if the one man who should had loved me from the start couldn't... nobody else ever would.
Over the years this scar claimed relationship after relationship. It's appetite for self-preservation was insatiable. Whenever someone would approach that point that little prick in my side would arise. The scars, the bruises, every drop of blood spilled... All of this came to the surface and the desire to shut down became so pronounced that it could not be denied.
Friends, family; nobody is safe when those defenses come shooting to the surface. The most simple of triggers can cause the walls to rise up so quickly that we assume there was a clean break. Yet on the other side we leave someone dazed and confused as we close our eyes and wish them away.
So what happens when someone doesn't go away?
Within our souls we have measured our own worth. We know what we feel we are worth and how much love we can accept from another. It such a deeply embedded logic, yet so illogically based, that when it is questioned the world seems to near collapse all around us.
When a person decides to push against our walls we become combative. The defenses we cherish are in danger. The attacker is irrational in our view as they somehow cannot see how misguided we believe their advances to be. We see ourselves as the untouchables and yet here is this person trying to reach over our walls and place themselves where only those scars remain.
No matter how guarded we are, no matter how many defenses we have erected, there will be this person who does not allow their love to be so easily refused. They see us in a way that we cannot see ourselves. They look beyond this standard we have for so long compared ourselves to. And in it's place they have drawn a new standard for us that reflects not the scars that have defined us, but rather what we could be... what we should have always been.
If we are lucky, if we can lower our walls just a little, we can feel the warmth of another's love without holding our own hearts in reserve. But for this to happen we must first allow ourselves to release our sense of self worth from the standard someone else has cast for us. We must break our attachment to the pain that has bound us and restricted us. We must allow the love of another to break down our guards and touch the scars we have clung to for so long.
This isn't something that happens over night. The reason for those scars must be addressed and the pain they cause must be released. The wounds that were left upon us by others may never truly heal and the pain may reappear from time to time. But if, and only when, we accept that we are worthy of the love of another... that is when the pain these scars bring can finally be eased. The torment these scars have created can finally be soothed as we allow this love to lift us beyond the prison they have created for us.
"Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other."
Psalm 85:10
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