"GEORGIA"

Stretching

As a kid, sometimes I was a pest or a royal pain in the a** harassing my sisters and once in a while they would just get up and sit on me. Or sometimes they had this thing called “Chinese torture” and would pin me on my back (or front) and then rap methodically on my chest or back with 1 or 2 knuckles… Not meant to hurt (too much) but to let me know to get lost or that they’d had enough.. but sometimes they would sit on me too long, or rap on my chest too hard or someone would get a knee in the eye or an elbow in the rib and I would end up being the one crying, and my parents would say. “oh stop it, you were asking for it” or “suck it up” and now I know that nobody was intentionally hurting anybody, but sometimes I felt like nobody was standing up for me.

Fast forward 20 something years and often I thought people who seemed to get hurt over words and other superficial things were weak, unbalanced, or whatever… weird, lame. And I’ve been the one dishing it out. Telling people, maybe not so bluntly or even consciously but in some form or another to “suck it up”, “get over it”, or “ you were asking for it, can’t you take what you got comin’?”

Then I met Becky, my wife, whom I love with every part of my being. She means the world to me and I would never intentionally hurt her, and yet I am continuously stumbling over ways in my words, my actions or lack of, that hurt her. She is the most sensitive person I know. And often I have to search very deeply within my own feelings to understand how “such and such” could hurt, why it could not be brushed off, discarded and forgotten or understood in a non-personal context… or whatever.

Thank God for mercy, Becky has begun to understand me and understand that my queries are merely honest questions and not personal attacks, or understand my comments in the context that I mean for them without taking them so personally. And I am slowly (very slowly) becoming more conscious of the deeper meaning of my words, or actions that go beyond their intent to what could actually be inferred. But I am not looking for miracles, this is a life-long search for understanding each other.