Forever hurt

One of the saddest things is people who've been hurt so much in their life that feeling hurt becomes the default emotion, the one you sense constantly if you're with them for any length of time.

They've got into the habit of feeling hurt,and have lost the ability to be happy. They see everyone around them as potentially hurting them and are permanently on the defensive.

I remember one woman I worked with - let's call her Beth - who looked forever beaten-down and subdued, hurt leaking out of her like sweat, always waiting for the next wounding remark, always complaining about the way people treated her.

I never discovered why she felt so hurt, who had done what to her to fatally undermine her resilience and self-esteem. But the emotional damage, the crushed psyche, was plain to see.

It was hard to befriend her because she was so suspicious of people's intentions, so sure that sooner or later she would be treated badly yet again. All I could do was handle her as gently as possible and not do anything to confirm her suspicions.

I can recall several women who carried this strong sense of hurt, but I can't recall any such men. I'm sure there are men who have been hurt just as much but are conditioned to hide the hurt and not show any sign of it. They may be in acute emotional pain but they put on a sanguine demeanour that gives nothing away.

I'm sure my father was full of hurt, but he would never admit it. He thought it was okay to be angry, or jealous, or possessive - healthy masculine emotions - but hurt was strictly taboo. A feminine thing, something for cissies, something humiliating. He bottled it all up and thought we couldn't see it.

He went to his grave still hurting. Because he was too ashamed to tell us.

Ow, that hurts

I'm quite susceptible to little hurts. A dozen times a day I feel hurt that I've been rejected, or ignored, or slighted, or not appreciated, or not understood, or treated brusquely.

But they're only little hurts, a bit like nettle stings or pinpricks. They only last a minute or two and then they're forgotten. I'm too resilient to dwell on them for long. I don't magnify every little hurt into a tearful melodrama. I shrug them off as a trivial part of daily life, just a sign of the rough and tumble of a hectic world.

The big hurts are a different story. The sort of hurt when a long-time friend suddenly snubs me, or my professional competence is doubted, or someone questions my sincerity or integrity. That goes deeper, like a thorn in my flesh. It pierces through the usual resilience and lodges somewhere, constantly resurfacing in bursts of bewildered pain.

That's the sort of hurt that can't just be shrugged off, though I'm still able to see it philosophically as an unfortunate but inevitable part of being human. I'm not the type of person who deals with serious hurt by getting bitter and vengeful, trying to cause as much hurt as was done to me.

I know some people would say that's a cop-out, that I'm bottling up my feelings and it's far healthier to ease the hurt by flinging it back where it came from. But that's not the way I see it. I want to drain the hurt, not add to it. So I keep it to myself and let it run its natural course.

Then again there's the biggest hurt of all, which is grief. Luckily up till now I've never experienced major, all-consuming grief, and I hope I never have to. I can only imagine how I might cope with it. Very well? Very badly? Probably the latter. Such excruciating hurt would knock me for six.

Tucked away

By the time you're my age, you've been through a lot of pain and hurt of one kind or another. If I gave it all free rein, it would be overwhelming. I would be an emotional wreck.

Childhood bullying, a vile-tempered father, failed friendships, failed romances, tyrannical bosses, nasty betrayals and rejections. Painful at the time and still painful many years later.

Those glib phrases "Get over it", "Deal with it", "Put it all behind you" are easy enough to say, not so easy to practise. Hurt isn't something you can just put in a rubbish bag and throw in the trash. It lingers, it loiters, it refuses to die.

You can come to terms with it. You can suppress it. You can take it to a therapist. You can pretend it's nothing much. You can take it out on other people. But at the end of the day it's still there, it's something you actually felt in all its raw intensity, and that has to leave a scar of some kind, a psychic wound. It happened and it's not going to unhappen. Somehow it has to be dealt with.

I have a bad memory. I'll forget the vicious words that someone used, the brutal look on their face, the clinical phrases in a redundancy letter. But I don't forget the cold way I was treated, the unkindness, the harshness.

I'm a forgiving person. But even when I can put myself in the other person's shoes, even when I can half-understand why they did what they did, what their motives were, what the catalyst was, it doesn't take away the pain.

Pain can cut you to the quick. It can break your heart. It can tear you to pieces. If I let it all out in its sheer extremity, I would be a jibbering lunatic. Like everyone else, I find ways of subduing it, of damping it down, of keeping it safely tucked away somewhere deep in my being.

Pain is the hidden shadow in everyone's identity. They may smile and chirp for other people's benefit, but who knows what they're keeping under wraps?