Nothing Left To Say

I hear people say this a lot and I don’t think it’s a statement about society now more than it is about us as a people, in which we genuinely expect people to hurt us.

We live with this ideal of “stranger danger” where people we don’t know are going to hurt us or insult us because of the way we wear our hair, or our clothes, etc. (Drew & I were guilty of this, as we brutally lambasted the frontman of the Neon Trees for this right before he performed Everybody Talks). But we all think of strangers as jerks, people who suck and are mean and are just looking to screw us over. That’s why when a friend or a loved one hurts us, we end up crippled, because we honestly expected them not to.

We trust the people we care about, sometimes blindly. We love and adore them and think they can’t hurt us ever. They will never say a snotty thing, never do something we don’t want them to, never act like a douchebag. We put them up on such a pedestal and think they are perfect and angelic and so freaking wonderful. Then, the reality sets in and they are in fact sometimes a huge, raving jerk. Then they do something stupid and we’re crippled because we just don’t understand how this person we saw so much good in could hurt us so freaking much.

We need to abandon the idea that the people we love won’t hurt us, because they will. People hurt each other, intentional or not, but it happens. The one attribute that I am most proud of is that I am completely incapable of intentionally hurting someone I love. I can’t. I don’t know how to do it and the thought of it makes me so upset to the point that I end up puking. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you, it just means I can’t do it on purpose (It’s not all selfless, for some people, my inability to get pissy and throw shade their way has more to do with the idea that they could get pissy right back and hurt me. But for about seven people in this life, it’s simply that I can’t). I’m sure I’ll lose my temper and shove my foot in my mouth, do something stupid, act super whiny or annoy the piss out of you. It’s just that I can’t do it on purpose. I know many people who are perfectly capable of destroying someone they love, tearing them to pieces until there is nothing left of them, some of those people are my closest friends. It doesn’t mean that one of us is “better” than the other, it just means that I don’t have that mean streak. Some people have a different brand of morality than others and that’s okay.

I think we need to stop holding the people we love to unrealistic expectations. You can love someone and sometimes hurt them. Just because they can’t retaliate doesn’t make them weak or you an asshole, it simple means you’re wired differently. You need to accept that & work on curbing that dark side of you. Just because someone is nice doesn’t mean that they can’t be a raving bitch some days. Just because you are capable of hurting someone who trusts you doesn’t mean that you will always hurt them, it just means you have to be more mindful of how you treat them. Maybe people need to stop promising each other that they won’t hurt them, but that you’ll try hard not to, and if you do, you’ll be really sorry and talk it out together.