A smoking gun

Today I realized something about myself: I can wound. I can hurt people. It seems like such an obvious concept, but it never really hit me that I could wield that kind of power. Mostly my life has been about documenting how people have hurt ME--how they've disappointed me; how they've said the wrong thing; how they've cared too little or not at all when I wanted them to care so much more; how they didn't listen enough or try hard enough or want me enough to fight for me just a little harder, just a little longer. Rejection stings and dislike is like a soft, sudden explosion in the pit of my stomach--when it comes to giving away my heart to someone who doesn't want it, or to someone who wants only the nice bits and not the angry or dark or broken bits, I'm easily swayed, easily deceived, easily devastated when the charade gets old and I realize my mistake. People have hurt me. My family has hurt me, my friends have hurt me, strangers on the bus and at the grocery store have hurt me--there are scars upon scars upon scars etched into every surface of my heart, and when I remember them they remind me that the world isn't nice, people aren't ever who you want them to be, I'm broken and he's broken and she's broken and when we give our broken pieces to that aunt or friend or boyfriend or mentor and expect them to put us back together again all we're doing is setting ourselves up for disappointment because it's IMPOSSIBLE for one broken person to mend another broken person. Impossible. We're messy by nature and all others can ultimately do for us is show us that we're not the only ones--they're messy too. They're maybe even looking to us for cohesion, but we ignore the broken pieces of themselves they offer us because we're too busy trying to thrust our own jagged bits into their unwilling palms. So it dawned on me that as I was falling apart, tearing at every seam and hurling accusations at all the individuals in my life who didn't see me and didn't SAVE me, those same people were clawing desperately at my flesh, BEGGING me to hear their cries, feel their pain, rescue them from a world that had gotten too cruel. I can wound. My words have power--and so does what I leave unspoken. With one look I can throw a spear at her heart. With one tight-lipped smile I can send her spiraling down, down, down, but when she's lying prostrate on the floor I imagine that she's mocking me from her lofty position so I hate her and I become blind to her need. Needy. She is so, so needy. They all are. And therein lies the problem: I'm needy too. I need and she needs and he needs and everybody needs, but our needs are so often at odds with those of everyone else that we fall into self-preservation mode and turn a deaf ear to the broken cries resounding all around us. We forget to assume resonsibility and instead become the victims--they DO and we WITHSTAND; they WOUND and we WEEP; they SHOOT and we SHATTER. But alas, sometimes we're the quickest draw of them all; sometimes we complain of the damage they've inflicted but we're the ones holding the dagger, the ones spewing poison from our lips. We can wound. Me and you--we can, we do, we WILL, hurt people. Sometimes unknowingly, at other times intentionally. I can wound. My actions have consequences that affect the people close to me, the people who unfortunately get to see not only the happy and kind and silly but the cruel and cold and broken too. I'm no saint but I don't ever, ever want to be the cause of someone's heartbreak. I don't ever want to become so consumed by my own disappointments that I become one in someone else's life. And I don't ever, ever want to be left with a smoking gun in my hand, realizing too late that her cries never reached my ears, her tears never touched my heart, her humanity never registered in my mind because I thought she was invincible.