Got Glue?

Yesterday I heard from a very good friend whom I hadn't heard from in a while.

I've been very upset with this person for reasons that I can't get into. But I felt that my feelings of anger, disappointment and sadness were warranted.

For those who've ever been on the other side of my anger, you know what I do when I am upset...I WRITE...LETTERS.

I think I've said before (even quite recently) that writing is my VOICE because it's the ONLY way I can ever get people to REALLY listen.

So I wrote a letter to this person expressing my feelings. I honestly didn't expect a reply. I simply needed to get my feelings "out there."

Well...to my surprise, I got a reply. It wasn't a nice one, but you know what...it was much better than being IGNORED. I absolutely HATE being ignored!!!

So the person told me how upset they were when they received my letter, and at one point even called me "evil." That's how upset they were. It's ok. I got it. And if I expected MY feelings to be heard AND ACKNOWLEDGED, then I owed this person the very same respect. So I listened. Name calling and all. Didn't interject. Didn't rebut. I simply listened.

When the person was done I said, "I wrote that letter because you hurt me."

To which they replied, "You hurt me."

Ok.

Then I asked, "Why did you hurt me?"

To which they asked, "Why did you hurt me?"

We could have gone on like this for HOURS, and I realized that we simply weren't going to get any further. At that moment, we were two broken people who each wanted the other to hurt more than the other had hurt them. *That sentence probably wasn't grammatically correct, but it flowed well in my mind, so I went with it.*

Oh, and what a fine job we did at hurting one another. Quite shameful really. As I reflect now on how poorly we treated one another, I can't help but hear the phrase, "Hurt people hurt people."

That's who we were and that's what we were doing. Now that we've acknowledged it, we can move forward in LOVE (as it should be) and not HURT (as it never should have been).

I don't really know where we go from here. There are a lot of pieces to pick up and piece back together. All we can really do is pick them up one at a time and glue them back together as best we can. The unfortunate part about that though is that no matter how well something once broken is glued back together, the cracks will always be there. Even if the item is glued back so well that the cracks are not visible to the naked eye...they're still there if you examine the item closely...microscopically.

Nevertheless, I'd rather have a cracked friendship pieced together by love than NO friendship at all. I pray that my friend and I can get past the hurt. I know I can, but this is a two-way street, so...

Now...Let the DIALOGUE begin: Have you ever broken an item and had to glue it back together? If so, was it as strong as it was before the break? Was it still functional, or were there leaks that made it no longer able to use?

Talk to me!

Til next time...