Dear Friends,
Like an old mine enthusiast, I often get lost in thought as I dive inward into my soul. Yesterday was no different. I woke up feeling kind of out of it. My sinuses were bothering me, and it was hard to think straight until I got into the shower. It was there that this particular epiphany hit home:
Hurt people people hurt people.
Of course, this is not something I coined and it wasn’t the first time I thought about it, but I was thinking about Liam and his girlfriend breaking up and I was wondering about things I could talk to him about to help him feel better. The two of them were a couple for a long time and I know that what my son knows about romantic love is almost completely shaped by this relationship.
I wanted to warn him about ‘rebound’ relationships. Looking back, and I have talked about this before, coming out of my first marriage, I was no good to anyone. In fact, coming out of all the major relationships in my life, I was no good to anyone for a good long while.
When the boom was lowered, I was hurting (and hurting a lot) each time a big relationship ended and I ended up hurting other people because of that. Not on purpose, mind you, as that is not in my nature, but I still hurt people. Sometimes you think you are doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons and you end up hurting someone and other times, you’re just not thinking about the fact that other people have feelings.
Thinking about this situation from this new(ish) angle helped me really embrace the idea of “hurting people hurt people.” When we are licking our own wounds, it’s a lot easier to inflict wounds on others without meaning to do so. We also become kind of magnets for others who are hurting, too. It’s kind of frightening how much we can sense about other people without even knowing it consciously sometimes.
I feel badly that I did a lot of the things I did, and I’m particularly bummed about how I was in the first several years of my marriage with Rhondi. I had not worked my way through a lot of the pain and hurt I had felt for a long time because of not only my first marriage, but previous relationships, too. I wasn’t a total asshole (at least not the way I like to remember it), but I was terrible at communicating where I was at and what I was feeling to those who I dated or flirted with during my single days.
If I would have just been able to say things like, “Hey, I like you but I’m not in a good place to start anything new right now. I’m sorry.” I could have probably saved myself and some people who didn’t deserve a terrible version of me some heartache.
Going back to the first few years Rhondi and I were together, though, I was just super pissed off at the world on the inside. I didn’t know how to be a good husband and I certainly didn’t know how to be a good stepdad. I let my own bullshit rub off on the people I lived with and I’ll have to live with that forever.
So, I am still figuring out what to say to Liam, but I feel glad that I can see the past with clearer eyes. Luckily, I still have a chance to make things better with the people I love. We can all do our best to be the best person we can be as long as our hearts are still beating.
*****
I didn’t know Michael 23 very well at all, but like many of my friends, I am feeling the loss. Phoenix was better because of him. God Speed.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Liam and I.
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