Have you ever met someone and they just seem angry at the world? You watch this person and usually label them a jerk or asshole because they seem so very cold and emotionless. Sometimes you’ll try to get to know them to understand what made them view the world with such disdain and other times you just stay out of their way. One of my favorite sayings is: You know my name but you don’t know my story.
You could know someone all your life and never know their true darkness and what caused it. As humans, we tend to bury the traumas we experience in life, believing if we don’t acknowledge them, they never existed and, therefore, can’t damage us. The unfortunate truth is the experiences we don’t deal with or even acknowledge are the ones which cause the most damage to our psyches, spirits and souls, preventing us from ever being able to experience pure, unadulterated joy and happiness.
Everyone handles traumatic experiences differently, some work themselves nearly to death to avoid any down time to think about it while others try to numb themselves with alcohol or drugs. When you’ve experienced a heartbreak, you’re leery of ever letting anyone near your heart again for fear it will happen all over again. In responding to and nurturing your fear, you tend to spend a lot of time alone or in unfulfilling relationships and wondering why you can’t find and sustain true love.
Well, you can’t find or sustain it because you’re not allowing yourself to actually feel anything or let anyone in, love can’t penetrate a closed heart. Heartbreak is one thing which damages us and something each and every one of us has dealt with at some point in our lives and we all handle it differently. When a heart is broken by someone you trusted and loved with your all, some will cry and be sad for an unusually long extended period of time, swearing they’ll never let anyone that close to them again. Others will go from person to person with the intentions of never getting attached again. In either situation, you’re still hurting, sad and quite lonely.
While heartbreak is something we’ve all experienced, there are traumas most of us are fortunate to never have dealt with or witnessed, therefore, we will never fully understand the damage and pain it causes another person. I feel safe in saying most of us have never seen our best friend’s head blown off or a pregnant woman’s stomach cut open and her baby stolen while she lay bleeding to death in a dirty alley. While we’ve all been betrayed by someone we trusted, most haven’t endured being raped and abused by someone we thought we could trust. Our traumas carry with them a sense of guilt. Example: you and your best friend are in a car accident, they die and you walk away with scrapes and bruises, you feel guilty that you lived and they didn’t.
Being in an abusive relationship carries with it the guilt because you feel your actions or smart mouth is the trigger for their violence towards you. An experience such as violence in your presence against a loved one can’t be drunk or smoked away, it actually has to be dealt with and that usually involves some couch time.
The reality is we all grew up with different home lives and life styles. The guy in high school who always had on the flyest gear may have gone to bed hungry every night. The guy with the hottest car on the parking lot has to look over his shoulder at all times because he’s in the drug game and there are those who want what he has. The shy girl who kept to herself could have been being emotionally abused and told she’d never amount to anything by her parents and, therefore, she believes it’s how everyone views her. 
The bully who picked on those they felt were weak may not have had a permanent place to lay their head each night and bounced from couch to couch just to have a roof over their heads because their parents kicked them out. The straight A student who was an uptight brown noser to all the teachers could have been the child of a crack head and swore they’d never end up like their parent. The female who slept around may have been molested at a young age by a family member and feels that’s all she has to offer and the only way to show love.
We are all guilty of judging someone from what we see on the outside and our personal judgements cause us to not want to get to know them or even care about them. As humans, we tend to not talk about the negative things transpiring in our lives because we deem them to be shameful. Over the last couple of years, I’ve gone thru a transformation
and have opened up a lot and share some of my most painful secrets with those I love and trust. My biggest hurdle has been to be vulnerable with others, I always thought it made me look weak but have since come to learn and appreciate it shows my strength. It frustrates me that I am judged on my appearance and people don’t take the time to know who I am at my core but I’ve been guilty of doing the same to others. I can proudly say I am no longer that judgmental person, I view every person as a story and know that what I see is only the cover. 
Due to the numerous chapters in our lives, we are all hurting in some form or another and to be judged by someone who hasn’t taken the time to try to know and understand us only causes more pain.
The children who suffered some form of abuse, anguish, or trauma growing up are the adults we deal with on a regular basis. The bully from high school is still a bully as an adult, they could be the jerk of a boss who uses their authority to make others feel small just to satisfy their ego. The female who was promiscuous in high school has never found love, only a long line of sexual partners and is still offering what’s between her legs as love. The straight A student was so blinded by not being her drug addicted parent she never lived life and focused solely on success. Sure she may have a fat bank account and everything materialistic she could ever want but she’s empty inside. 
The drug dealer may not have made it out of his 20’s alive and if he did, he’s spent some time being a resident of the state in a cell. The girl who felt as though she were the ugly duckling grew up and learned how to do her make-up and hair and is now a mean girl in her 50’s, judging every female she passes due to her own insecurities. These people may have biologically aged but they never grew or matured and are stuck in the saddest period of their lives.
I say it all the time and I’ll continue to say it: No one is perfect, we all have flaws and a story darker than most can handle even hearing about. One facet of being grown is being vulnerable and sharing your experiences with someone you trust, no matter how dark and twisted it may seem to you. When you share with the right person, they won’t judge nor condemn you, they’ll listen and sometimes that’s all we need, a listening ear, open heart, shoulder to cry on, understanding and forgiving embrace. 
We have all been thru things in our lives which should have killed us but we are still here, there is a purpose on our lives. Your experiences don’t who you are, just because they happened to you doesn’t make them who you are. If you feel you can’t talk to anyone about what you’ve been thru, grab a pen and some paper and write about it, trust me, it’s very cathartic and you’ll feel that weight lift off your spirit.