Un-Protect Your Heart: The People Who Hurt You Are No Longer Here
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi
SECTION ONE: PUSHING LOVE AWAY
Pushing love away? Who would do that? we say. None of us think we do it––but, we do it––and we do it all of the time.
When you really consider what love is –– honestly –– how could we not? Love is supposed to be the greatest thing in the world, right? Love is supposed to be the greatest feeling in the whole wide universe, right? Bullsh*t. No... hot, steamy mounds of free-range, grass-fed, Disney, fantasy, bullsh*t. Pardon me; my pen's a little jaded today, and I'm far from alone, so get off it. Disembark that high-horse so we can keep it real for once.
Sigh.
Most of you veteran lovers know you don't live like love is the greatest thing in the whole wide universe––and that's for one really good, solid, reason: You're not brain-dead. And that's despite the brain-deadish things you occasionally let fall from your mouth, like, "I just love being in love." –– OR –– "I can't wait to be in love again." The reason Rumi had to so eloquently pull your card way, way back in the 13th century is because you (we) speak deluded hypocritical words while behaving your (our) deepest truth about love. And that truth is all about fear.
If we're being honest...
Isn't LOVE the most frightening damned thing in the whole wide screaming universe itself? Isn't it that one, single, solitary thing that can so effectively break you into halves, then more halves, and then more halves until you lie shattered –– a million pieces of worthless grief on the floor –– amidst the bloody entrails your latest appointed predator snatched out of your inmost core?
Don't be ashamed. Nod your head yes.
No worries. I've been there. You've been there. We've all been there. It's a terrible condition to be in, isn't it? Defenseless; raw; ragged––a chain-smoking mental patient who never smoked before––fetal positioned for hours, mumbling incoherent sentences to yourself while elongated drool drips from your trembling chin with that achy-cry stuck in your esophagus––the one that just won't come out, but makes your face a frozen, permanent, ugly, open-mouthed scowl? "AHHHGGHHHHHHHHHAHHHH..." says that slow, painful, slobbery sob?
Card pulled, again. You don't really love love.
SECTION TWO: CRAZY IN LOVE? OR, JUST CRAZY DURING LOVE?
After you've loved and lived and lost enough times in life, you come to an interesting juncture about the phenomenon called love. You can no longer accurately discern if it is friend or foe, killer or savior, devil or angel. You were once so free and crazy in love during your first relationships, and by the time you get to your sixth, seventh or eleventh, you're more like just crazy during love––and there's a profound difference between the two. Ask your ex-lovers. They will tell you; that is, if they'll return your texts.
For many of us, love is our most intense desire and want, while simultaneously, our most intense fear and potential enemy. Can you imagine the magnitude of crazy and cognitive dissonance that sets up in a person's brain? For some of you, it's of eeeeeeepic proportions. I say that because, again, we’ve decided to keep it real here. And, in the spirit of that declaration, remember, you don't really love love.
Sadly, you're not alone.
SECTION THREE: CRUISING FOR DATES AT THE PET RESCUE SHELTER
There's a plentitude of well-mannered, intelligent, functional people you know and interact with daily, and you think they're sane, but what do you know? You're in the Disney club. So, you think they're normal. You may even think some of them are great. You may even think this person or that person might be great in a relationship. But, beware, love neophyte. You truly don't know who they are until you have touched their crazy bone.
When you see that person in a normal non-threatening backdrop, of course they are the coolest person in the world. They're cute. Fluffy. They laugh at all the right jokes. But if you cross that threshold with them, trying them out on a date or three (or God forbid, have sex) watch out. The same sane person you knew could turn into a rabid, fang-bearing, growling killer right before your eyes. Sane to sinister in a flash. 7:31 pm, sane. 7:33 pm, sinister. What happened at 7:32 pm? That's when they started falling in love with you. And congratulations. That's when you became enemy/threat #1. As far as they're concerned, you're in perfect striking distance to blast them into a million slobbery pieces again. And they're gonna make you pay for that sh*t (in advance).
You're now just a gender lump of all of the faces they've dated before you, and that's when they start preparing for mortal combat.
So. Neophyte. Let me level with you. If you're in that situation right now, you may want to run. You may not be up for what's coming your way, pal. Jaded lovers do not love the way fresh love, loves. You will need to prepare yourself. Royally.
When you let the jaded-lover switch you from the friend file to the potential love-of-my-life file, you have surely just fu***d the hell up –– in a major way. I'm talking retro rabbit-stew Glenn Close fu***d the hell up. You're now in that file labeled: "This is the son of a bitch who will one day hurt me and gut me like that last demon a**hole did to me."** You’re not in a relationship with a heart. You’re in a relationship with an activated amygdala on high-alert. That heart’s in a shallow unmarked grave somewhere in a backyard.
Nothing will be the same after that. Forget the person you knew. They're gone. If they've never done healing work –– if they're unconscious like most, their past pain will possess them like that famous 70's horror film. You know the one. Remember the chick with the extremely flexible neck, pre-yoga craze? Yeah. That's the one.
So...
Once you're in that file in a person's mind, there is no winning. It does not matter what you do or how great you are. You're still seen as the interminable enemy. The real you doesn't exist to them anymore either. You're gone. You're now just a gender lump of all the faces they've dated before you, and that's when they start preparing for mortal combat. Yep. This all happened while you were innocently trying to order dessert on the third date.
SECTION FOUR: SO YOU'RE A LOVER, NOT A FIGHTER, NOR A RUNNER –– BRILLIANT.
Surely you saw their pupils radically tighten. Surely you saw the crazy show up in their eyes. But, you're still there. Aren't you? You're trying to rationalize it away because you can't accept that the crazy-eye just came from the same beautifully sane person you knew prior to 7:33 pm. So, you dismiss it. And that's when the REAL games begin. You sure you're ready for this?
You like them a lot. And they like you a lot. And in their mind, that's the MF'n problem. Because you scare the sh*t out of them. You're that new #1 threat and you'll definitely be treated that way going forward –– all because you did something so right, it made them feel some love toward you –– and love, my friend, is the LAST thing that person REALLY wants to feel. Love is the cliff they're running from. They know what happened the last time. And you slimy bastard, you... here you are trying to drag them over it again.*
Think about it...
Is this not the human condition almost everywhere you look? It is a world full of reserved, preserved, withdrawn hearts, dying inside, because that's not what hearts are built for.
Those ‘bishes’ are built to fly.
Like a kite.
LOVE IS NOT AN ACTIVITY OF HALF-MEASURES AND SAFETY BELTS. AFTER YOU'VE LOVED AND LOST ENOUGH TIMES, IT IS INCREASINGLY AN ACTIVITY OF EXTREME COURAGE.
In unconsciousness...
Love turns into defense vs. defense, opponent vs. opponent, in a space where allies should lurk –– because you can't love and protect your heart at the same time. It's not physically possible. It's not emotionally possible. Either your heart is open or your heart is closed. Either you're in this possibility of love or you're out. There is no halfway. There are no half leaps.
The hard truth is this; you will fly or you will fall. There are no safety-nets. And you have to be okay with that. Being okay with it is your safety net.
Love is not an activity of half-measures and safety belts. After you've loved and lost enough times, it is increasingly an activity of extreme courage.
Love is not an activity of half-measures and safety belts. After you've loved and lost enough times, it is increasingly an activity of extreme courage.
Wounded lovers are the worst people to try to love, but they’re also the ones who need it the most. They're like paranoid zombies, determined to wound you first, before you can wound them.
I don't advise cruising for dates at the local pet rescue, but, you're going to do it anyway (the human rescue). They're no different from the Golden Retriever rescue your neighbor brought home –– the one who was abused for years and now seemingly has an emotional/mental issue? The one where you reach out to pet the pretty doggie and the doggie's first reaction is an attempt to bite your entire arm off –– in one chomp? Niiiiice, little doggie.
Don't take it personally. You have another arm left. The doggie doesn't even see you. All it sees is its previous abusers where you stand. It has a kind of inner blindness on its inner-eye –– a cataract memory that precludes it from the ability to be present with present-day reality. All they see is a potential threat, from the past, while they suffer, and suffer, and suffer –– nearly incapable of receiving love, in the present.
Don't be that wounded, suffering, golden canine, pushing love away. I know it hurts, but... you have to try. That open wound of yours must be touched again, before it can be cleaned, dressed, sewn, stitched, mended, healed––for good.
Life has requirements.
And love is one.
You can't protect your heart. That kills it.
Not to be all Mosesy, but… It is divinely incumbent upon you to un-protect your heart and love again. Hearts atrophy from lack of use. Hearts die when disallowed to love. Take your kite outside (out of the dark closet)––fly it. Let someone rescue you –– mainly, from yourself. Soar it. Let it breathe. Let the sun see it. Let it love. It’s what it’s built for. And if it falls, again. Just keep throwing it into another wind, and another––until it finds a wind that will never let it go.
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
