I've always made the same mistake with people who've hurt me. Going back for more, having already suffered their abuse, their indifference, their disdain. Ignoring what I've already seen of their character. Continuing on with them as if they were going to somehow magically change when they never so much as apologized or even acknowledged what they’d said and done to hurt me in the first place.

I go back to them with none of these issues resolved. And what they think is…….oh here she is again. Whatever she was upset about wasn't that important after all. And they proceed on that basis to hurt me all over again in the exact same fashion. And why not? Why should they ever alter to accommodate me when I’m so eager to accommodate even their abuse? When they know I'll be back.

Is that what I want? No? Well it would sure seem to be based on my behavior. I've told myself a hundred times before. When people show you a side of themselves that’s cruel and contemptuous and utterly self-centered, run! Don't pretend you didn't see it or that when the curtain draws back a second time there will be a different picture painted on the wall. As if this were a magic show. It isn't. Just run. Don't stop. Don't look back. Run.

It's not hard if you don't keep thinking about it, playing the movie back in your head, putting all kinds of reasons and excuses into their mouth to justify what they did when they themselves couldn’t be bothered to justify it themselves.  

Listen….hear that? Right. There's no sound at all. They aren't even calling you back. Don't go back there on your own accord, crawling on your belly like a beaten dog!

But, but, but…it’s just that saying goodbye to someone  forever can be so heartbreaking. Not in any corny  Hallmark way…but existentially…cosmically…Greek drama put-your-own-eyes-out tragic…this unique and mortal individual will be passing from your life and one day from life itself…and you will never see them again. Never! There's this one transit in eternity when you're in orbit and then you're both whisked away in different directions. One day they will be utterly unseen…unseeable…for eternity…even with the most powerful telescope and then it will be too late, too late forever.

How can anyone make that call? How do you become so strong? Cold? Calloused?

How can anyone choose to annihilate another from your life like that?

How, in the face of that great irretrievable loss, can people not come to some kind of understanding…not be considerate of each other? Don’t they realize how little time there is to be kind, to cherish, and to understand one another? Don’t they realize the enormity of the loss that waits just around the corner of every human life?

It just seem terrible to me, intolerable, a pain too big to hold inside one body, one mind, one heart…like the grief will just reach a critical mass & explode me into subatomic particles…

That kind of thinking is a blueprint for abuse. It’s a formula for perpetual hurt. It’s a “kick-me” mentality.

Run, don’t look back, don’t so much as think twice about it. Remember Lot’s wife; if you turn, you’re screwed. Finished. Pillar of Salt.

And yet and yet and yet….no more and yets…

Oops, I’m turning….tasting salt on my lips...

RUN!

RUN!
RUN!