an essay by Raneem Ali
art by Raneem Ali @neem.420
“You always hurt the ones you love, the ones you shouldn't hurt at all” -The Mills Brothers We worry about hurting the wrong people in our life. We try living without causing anyone pain, but how is that even possible? When you really care for and love someone, you start getting vulnerable. Most people I know don't like getting vulnerable, because they are afraid of getting hurt. I am like most people. The only people that can hurt you are the ones who really care about you, and when you get hurt by them, it shows that you really care for them too. Because why would it matter to you if they hurt you or not if they are unimportant to you? That is the point. We all get hurt from ones we love the most, any other type of hurt we just tend to shrug off. Building up walls to hide your emotions and seem like you have a stone-cold heart isn’t a safe defense tactic. You are not protecting yourself that way no matter how much you think you actually are. You are only digging up a hole for your emotions and eventually, you wouldn't remember how it felt to be loved, sad, shocked, or happy. We hurt the ones we love the most because we are afraid of getting hurt first. We are not brave enough to face our emotions, not brave enough to live with who we really are just in case we hate who we find ourselves to be. We are human. We are not perfect in any way, maybe it is the vulnerability, getting hurt, and hurting others that shapes us as people. Were we a clean slate? Then who do I blame my mistakes on if not myself? We hurt ourselves by hurting the ones we love. Even though we just broke a piece of ourselves by hurting someone else, our mistakes are what shapes us. How we learn from our mistakes is how we grow, we’ll keep hurting the same people and making the same mistakes until we stop the cycle. Until we learn our lesson. And sometimes it’s too late.