The Hurted

Do you ever get hurt by people? Oh. Of course you do. You're human. (Unless you're a sociopathic human, but I suspect sociopaths wouldn't have a particular interest in reading this blog.)

But what do you do when you're hurt by someone? Do you confront them? Talk to them? Send them an email? Cry alone in your room?

I'll tell you what I do. I simmer. I ruminate. I get hurter and hurter. (And yes, I know 'hurter' is not a real word, but it is the most accurate non-word there is.) And then I concoct wild stories in my head in which the person who has hurt me does something really terrible, something so utterly, horrendously vile that I can scream and yell and make an absolute scene and impart something poetically withering that conveys without ambiguity just how hurted I am.

But I don't, of course, because it never happens. And so I just sit on the feelings, and eventually they pass, sort of absorbed into my system, or perhaps into the air. And then I let it go. I never hold grudges. Anger simply feels too uncomfortable to hold on to.

I'm not like this in romantic relationships. I never had any trouble expressing my feelings to my ex. Nor do I hesitate in conveying hurts or upsets to my parents, no did I with my late sister, nor do I with my kids.

It's friends that are hard. So ridiculously hard.

A couple of years back a very close friend sent me an email. She'd been hurt by something I said, and she wanted to clear the air. I was so happy she had sent it, and I was mortified by having distressed her. It gave me the opportunity to apologize, and we moved forward, and all was fine.

On another occasion I actually did confront a friend, after a very long series of small but significant hurts. But I didn't do it nicely, in a thoughtful email. I ended up yelling at her for pretty much nothing at all, which left me feeling far worse than if I'd addressed the issues in the first place.

I'm not sure why I can't express hurts when they occur. It's not that I'm not assertive. I think it's fear of total rejection, or uncertainty about my right to feel hurt in the first place. Either way, it gives rise to some quite bizarre fictional scenes that would play beautifully in some movie starring Meg Ryan and scored by Taylor Swift.

So that's a little insight into the complexities of my brain. What about yours? How do you deal with hurt?