Have you ever seen an abused animal? Seen how they act around humans? It doesn’t matter if you were the one abusing the animal or not, they look at you with those untrusting eyes and they just say “stay away.”
The courage it takes to learn to trust someone again. The time it takes to learn someone and understand them. And in the back of your mind are the memories of what’s happened in the past. And one little misstep, those memories come flooding back in a rush and wash away all that trust you worked so hard to build.
Now, you have to double your efforts, you have to double the amount of courage it takes to try again. And it’s not easy. Because you are going against your own instincts. You are going against the lessons you’ve learned and you’re opening yourself up for more of the same pain that you already are so full of. And you’re putting your faith into something that you don’t believe in: trust. Trust that one time, one day, it won’t happen again. That knife won’t stab you again. That pain won’t flood your heart again. That anger won’t sweep in and fill your mind with red and blind you to the fact of something being a simple accident.
But for humans, this process can be even more difficult. Because we are aware of the choices we make. And we may ask ourselves, are we making the right choice by trying again? Are we really being courageous? Or are we being stupid for making the same mistakes? And I’ve talked to a lot of people who draw hard lines on this issue. Many of whom who will not allow others the opportunity of harming them again. And you see it, you see that look in their eyes. That look of not trusting, of being hurt.
Communication can be the answer to this problem. Finding a way to break through the walls and just being able to have a dialogue. Thinking about all the worry, all the pain and all the fear that can be avoided if we could talk it out and be able to express what it is we are feeling and what is going through our minds. But we have become a culture of protecting ourselves, of building walls to keep others at bay. And I cannot deny that it’s for good reason.
But what do we do when we find that right someone? How do we know how to let someone through our wall when we don’t give them a chance to really communicate with us? When we ourselves don’t open up and tell others the truth of what it is we are thinking and feeling. How can there be honesty when two people only speak in half truths. What is the price we are really paying for not talking to someone and telling them how we really feel? And is that price greater or less than the price we pay for maybe being burned one more time?
I don’t know.