The day before Thanksgiving, I’m driving down the road, running errands before my girls get home from college, and an epiphany hits me like a ton of bricks: I cut people I love out of my life not because I’m done with them but because I am terrified of them.
This autumn has been the most difficult season of my entire life. It has been filled with pain and loss beyond what I have ever known. People you dislike can cut you to pieces, but there is absolutely nothing that can hurt more than the betrayal of the person closest to you. I cut someone out of my life in an instant and made damned sure this person would not want to return, just in case my heart ever softened.
Ironically, in a season of loss, all my past seems to be coming back to me in the form of people I cut out–all for good reasons I’ve never regretted–and this season has been one of intense spiritual lessons and decisions I never ever ever would have thought I would have made in regard to people from my past. It’s not that I hold grudges…. No, once I’ve been obliterated by someone I love, I put up walls to make sure they can’t hurt me that way again. And that usually means they don’t stay in my life.
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But really loving someone is about giving a part of yourself that is vulnerable, by trusting that that person will handle that secret, dark, fragile part of you with care. About taking down the walls completely or either letting them crawl inside the walls with you, where no one else is allowed to go. Trust is based not on the other person’s promise to tend our secrets but on the promise of our own vulnerability. Trust is broken when that shared secret part of us is no longer tended and we can no longer allow ourselves the luxury–yes, luxury–of having our defenses down, of stripping down emotionally naked to someone else.
What I realize for the first time on the day before Thanksgiving is the startling truth about how I as an empath handle hurt that I cannot bear to live with. As an empath, I merge too closely, bond too deeply with people I love, and there is no way not to stay stuck in the same scenario without severing the bond, at least long enough to gain objectivity and regain strength and personal power. Cutting people out of my life isn’t about my sense of justice toward them. It’s not about their cruelty to me or their lack of boundaries. It’s not about excising toxic people or memories from my life. It’s this: cutting people out of my life after they’ve hurt me is the only way I know to protect myself from allowing myself to be hurt in that way ever again by that person.
Cutting people out of my life has never been an easy thing or a casual thing. Even as an act of self-preservation, people I love usually have to work quite hard–repeatedly–at hurting me before I’ve finally had enough. Then they get mad at me for cutting them out, regardless of the warnings.
Usually, there are three reasons I shut people out: 1. Someone does something intentionally hurtful to me, often for their own enjoyment or sense of entitlement. These often are not people I love and may be people I’m in competition with in some way. I cut them out and never really let them back in. It is in their nature to be scorpions, and I will try my best not to get stung again. These tend not to be emotional relationships, but I do have some blood relatives who qualify for my brand of shunning, and I’ve never regretted it. 2. Someone hurts me but thinks they’re doing it for my own good. These are people I love who have boundary issues. If I let them back into my life, they are right back to ignoring boundaries within days–if not hours. These are usually loyal friends who let…
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