“Stay away from people who make you feel hard to love.”
Social media is great with the advice. It pops up out of every corner… What did we do before platitudes and witticism came in fancy backgrounds or humorous photos, or the ever serious black and white that looks valid and authoritative? Which conversations do we no longer need when encouragement comes in a well timed word pill that makes us feel good. After all, we can paint others as toxic, dangerous, narcissistic, gaslighter, abusive, hater, and definitely, not part of our tribe. Neat Box. Tidy assumption. Label.
Or, are they just wounded. Unhealed. Afraid. And is it easier to brand someone else and cut them out than it is to find out why I am threatened by their presence in my life? Some of these people really have been let close enough to my heart to wound me. Some of those wounds are still stitched up with PTSD. I can no longer trust that person. I do understand the need for distance, even a life without a certain individual.
But is staying away a road to healing? Or is it an escape route along which I form a version of myself that is ever cautious, afraid of love, running from people?
Because I have grown up in a culture that thrives on the specific definition of identity and roles: the need to know where one fits in the template of life, I have found it easy to both accept the labels and dole them out. But how much of the expectation I place on others to behave a certain way is there because my own boundaries are unclear to me. Boundaries are tricky… if we don’t know who we are, they are emotional land mines.
I think that is why a statement like “stay away from people who make you feel hard to love” is such a thought trigger for me. Feel. My kids make me feel hard to love. My kids make me feel disrespected. Unheard. They make me feel like I don’t even have a voice sometimes. And when I behave as though these feelings are true, I become extremely difficult to love. I yell, I discipline emotionally, the element of surprise comes out in how I treat doors, how I walk. I feel afraid that they don’t see me as “the mama” and I want them to feel fear. It’s not even conscious. And then I see them repeat my actions. Mirror them. Am I raising monsters? No. But I am provided with a rather prevalent picture of what living out of my fears instead of my innate being produces. Their temporarily expressed opinion of me, largely based on their contrary desires at the time has been allowed to dictate my actions. When I base my boundaries on those feelings, I don’t leave space for me or my children to grow and change. I make rules that are unreasonable. Consequences I later don’t have the heart to follow through on. I become rash and inconsistent. And I hate how I sound.
Have you ever tried to set or change the tone of a relationship? I think of the vows we make at weddings. The contracts we sign when we take jobs. The treaties between nations. Clearly laid out expectations of behaviour based on a reasonable understanding of what one is capable of bringing to the table. We see the beauty, the worth, the design, the specific skill set, the good, and call it to rise. My favourite employers have been those who have seen my strengths and let me use them. Human beings shine best when we are truly seen. Manifestation is brought about by observation. But that which someone else sees in me cannot truly manifest until I embrace the good and beauty in myself. That is not based on behavioural assessment. It is based on my understanding of my design.
If someone else can trigger a sense of unworthiness in me, I believe not truth, but a lie, and it is I who need to be healed and made whole. My default is not be coping mechanisms, my default is how I am made manifest by the One who observed me first, and knows I am not difficult to love. I cannot know myself well independent of my Maker. I think this is the difference between healing and coping. Modern therapy often equips one for the latter. It places an external template which tempers the soul and depends on the will to overrule emotional response. It makes one feel they are in control. But it also quite often places the boundaries on the stimulus, rather than the person affected. Healing takes my poor response, makes me ask what the fear is attached to it, traces the fear back to the lie, and replaces it with the truth of what my Maker, my Father, my Life Breath, even the Universe, if you will, says about me.
My true self cannot be touched by that which does not give life for it is in union with Life itself. And this is also true of those I have slotted into tidy behavioural files.
Some have said forgiveness frees the heart that forgives to live, and isn’t for the other person in the experience at all. I beg to differ. If choosing to see is the key to manifestation, then choosing to see a person who has wounded me, in their true light, is key to leaving them space to change. One made for love, who believes that to be an innate design, cannot see another as anything but love. If I can heal from my wounds… a process fuelled by the Source if Life, then anyone else can. People are not toxic. Or narcissistic. Or hard to love. Their behaviour that results from wounds that are not healed, is.
Should we take on a steady diet of eroding friendships? No. And we won’t if our boundaries are healthy. But nor should we be afraid of a person who cannot see themselves as the Manifestation of the many pleasant thoughts of their Maker. Choose to see the person underneath the scars. It may not change how frequently you intentionally cross paths with them, but it may change your intention toward them. And thoughts have power. Thoughts became words that spoke your existence, and that same Life Breathing Spirit has put the collective consciousness in you. Sit down in that peace today, and look at yourself and others with different perspective. No one can make you feel anything. They can only validate what you have accepted as truth, and now resonates in tandem on a vibrational level. Let the vibration of love resonate. Put the label maker away. I was made for Love, you were made for Love. We were made to Love each other.