Protected
Written yesterday, in another context, to another person:
"I saw a movie with my parents earlier today called Enough Said. It was a pretty good film. A few lines in it stayed with me though. It was one of those moments that something holds you, because you're open to it, and perhaps you need to hear it.
The female protagonist in the movie is symptomatic of our generation. She's single, divorced, a wonderful person, searching for a partner, smarting still about her past, trying to live her life fully... but in her effort to protect herself, and a few bad miscalculations, she fatally undermines a very promising relationship. (I'm not a movie buff by any measure, but I wanted to give you a bit of context.)
After the she's messed up their relationship, her now-former love asks her
"why?" [she acted out the way she did]
"I wanted to protect myself", she replies
"and what about protecting us?" he asks back
and therein lies the heart of the human condition
what about protecting us?
We go to great lengths to protect ourselves, and with each hurt, we tend to find more ways to protect ourselves-- financially, physically, recreationally... but the one that is possibly the most important-- emotionally. We hesitate to give up that fear, lest we get hurt again. We are our worst enemies.
In my last relationship, I think I tried, in all that we went through and experienced, to "protect us". What I didn't realise was that I was the only one doing that. When we ended it, the hurt wasn't about regretting that I didn't protect myself, but about being disappointed at the end that I hadn't been protected, and more importantly, had purposely ignored that reality. We might have loved one another, but we were not right for each other. More importantly, he was not the right person for me.
I look back, and there are many points at which I should have known. I can't do it all over again, and I can't absolve myself of responsibility either, but I know what I need to feel the next time around-- "protected", by my partner, too.
One can never measure these things, or value them, or weigh whether it is enough, but one can know the presence of it, and learn to recognise the absence of it too.
To sleep at night, knowing that you're looking out for the people you love, and as you drift to sleep that you're looked out for too, especially by the person who lies beside you, and breathes gently into the space, and into the memories, and into the life that you share."
"I saw a movie with my parents earlier today called Enough Said. It was a pretty good film. A few lines in it stayed with me though. It was one of those moments that something holds you, because you're open to it, and perhaps you need to hear it.
The female protagonist in the movie is symptomatic of our generation. She's single, divorced, a wonderful person, searching for a partner, smarting still about her past, trying to live her life fully... but in her effort to protect herself, and a few bad miscalculations, she fatally undermines a very promising relationship. (I'm not a movie buff by any measure, but I wanted to give you a bit of context.)
After the she's messed up their relationship, her now-former love asks her
"why?" [she acted out the way she did]
"I wanted to protect myself", she replies
"and what about protecting us?" he asks back
and therein lies the heart of the human condition
what about protecting us?
We go to great lengths to protect ourselves, and with each hurt, we tend to find more ways to protect ourselves-- financially, physically, recreationally... but the one that is possibly the most important-- emotionally. We hesitate to give up that fear, lest we get hurt again. We are our worst enemies.
In my last relationship, I think I tried, in all that we went through and experienced, to "protect us". What I didn't realise was that I was the only one doing that. When we ended it, the hurt wasn't about regretting that I didn't protect myself, but about being disappointed at the end that I hadn't been protected, and more importantly, had purposely ignored that reality. We might have loved one another, but we were not right for each other. More importantly, he was not the right person for me.
I look back, and there are many points at which I should have known. I can't do it all over again, and I can't absolve myself of responsibility either, but I know what I need to feel the next time around-- "protected", by my partner, too.
One can never measure these things, or value them, or weigh whether it is enough, but one can know the presence of it, and learn to recognise the absence of it too.
To sleep at night, knowing that you're looking out for the people you love, and as you drift to sleep that you're looked out for too, especially by the person who lies beside you, and breathes gently into the space, and into the memories, and into the life that you share."
