Raw

The first lie they tell us is that fairytales can come true.

The second is that people are inherently good.

I learnt the hard way that neither of these hypotheses are true, that the world can be cold, dark and lonely; that people are selfish, self absorbed and often downright nasty.

That every time your heart breaks, it hardens and shrinks a little more, that you lose trust in others and in yourself. Your self esteem takes a knocking, sometimes to smithereens.

That you can't always be who you want to be, or do what you want to do.That life comes along and it destroys your plans, your goals, compromises your principles and stomps on your heart time and time again.

People can hurt you. 

Those who you love or respect can hurt you the most.

We grow, we shrink, we change and we think the trick is to just keep on picking ourselves up and trying again and again, on and on and on and on.

We lie to ourselves and manufacture excuses for others bad judgements and behaviours, especially when its is aimed at us.....is it egoism or blind hope that people are not so cruel, so hurtful, so soul destroying, that the wicked with dies and the bad guys lose.

Until we can no longer lie to ourselves, the truth is there stark, enormous, in balck and white with no grey areas, in your face, unescapable, unexcusble and unappealing.

And sometimes that realization hurts more, and the hindsight, the looking back, the signs are so obvious, how did I miss them?

And he lied, and she lied, and I lied to myself.

Over and over again.

And broke a little inside.

The trust, the heart, the soul - leaving you raw and open and bleeding, nerves on edge, wound so tight, heart in pieces, broken and bruised.

And yet however raw we feel... we heal. 

We mend and the hope creeps back in, and whilst we may not be able to give 100%, we give 99,9 and we get back on that horse, and theres plenty of fish in the sea and a leopard can change it's spots.

And we try again, we trust, we love, we hope.

And the rawness fades