Her words: I must kill Love

Two weeks ago, I asked a gentleman in the support group a dark question.

I said, "Tell me honestly. What would it take for you….. to do to her….what she has done to you?"  (he had considered self-harm)

The group became quiet.

He looked at me with a expression as if wincing from pain and shook his head.

"No" he said. "I could never do that to anyone. Especially her." 

(His answer didn’t surprise me. I expected it.)

My point was………..but she did. So I asked him, “What does that tell us about her?”

For the record, she inflicted enough pain on him that he wanted to end his life.

Yet despite everything she had done, the very thought of intentionally inflicting that same kind of soul crushing pain on another human being was completely foreign to him.

Because it forced me to ask a different question.

No one is born on this Earth with the capability or intention of destroying another person's soul.

So?  What has to happen to a human being before they become capable of destroying another human being emotionally?

Healthy people DO NOT systematically destroy the people who love them.

A few months earlier, a different gentleman named Scott joined my heartbreak support group after his marriage had fallen apart.  This is his second one.

From the very beginning, he struck me as an incredibly authentic, honest, and deeply brokenhearted man. Over the course of several meetings, he shared with group that he had spent more than two decades in an abusive marriage. After that relationship ended, he remarried, only to watch the new one unravel in less than three years.

As Scott spoke, tears filled his eyes. The pain on his face was unmistakable. He told us that the primary emotion he was struggling with was shame.

Then he said something I have heard from many genuinely kind people who have been deeply wounded.

"Maybe it is me."

He didn't say it once.

He said it over and over again.

"Maybe it's me. Maybe it’s me. It's got to be me."

Watching him say those words was heartbreaking because I was not looking at a man who wanted to blame someone else. I was looking at a man desperately searching for a reason that made sense of his pain.  He was afraid that he failed her.

Now I can tell this man hundreds of times that narcissist do not ask themselves if they are the problem but that will not take his sadness away.

(something unexpected was coming though in the next few weeks)

I have given more than 500 support group meetings, but this was a genuine first.

Scott’s wife had moved out of their home somewhere around April of last year.   It was a brand-new house.  Quite by accident, he discovered a concealed compartment hidden behind a movable panel, an ingenious little feature the builder had designed into the house that had gone unnoticed by Scott for the last three years.

There were 11 journals in it. Upon opening the first one, he instantly recognized his wife’s handwriting.

{I want to interrupt this story right here. I need the reader of this blog to understand exactly what was going through my mind at that moment. As someone who has led heartbreak recovery groups for years, my first thought was:

"Oh no... here it comes."

I was already sure that she strategically left it behind. I thought I was about to hear gaslighting, fabricated accusations, and carefully crafted lies designed to destroy what little was left of this man's soul.

Based on everything I have seen in the past, I fully expected to hear the ravings of the strategic and calculating mind of someone determined to win at any cost.

I could not have been more wrong.}

The following is a journal entry:

“I feel so alone…

I feel abandoned…

My heart hurts like it did when I was a child…

To God. What did I do wrong??

My heart is protected by a shield that keeps me safe but will not let Love in…

I don’t want to be the way that I am…

I am unloved…

I am a witness to everyone else’s loving future………..while I have none.”

As I listened to the words from the journal, something kept bothering me.

For a couple of weeks I couldn’t put my finger on it but I had heard these words before.

Not these exact words, but the pain underneath them was unmistakably familiar. The loneliness. The confusion. The feeling of being completely abandoned by the world.

And then it hit me.

I was reminded of several quotes from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

 –Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Then another:

“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.”

–Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

And finally, the one that stopped me:

“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.” –Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Think about that last sentence for a moment.

You know……even Satan had companions in his desolation.

Even Satan was not alone.

Mary Shelley's Creature looked at the most condemned being imaginable and still found a reason to envy him. Satan had others beside him.

The Creature had no one.

Suddenly, I was not hearing the words of the Monster I had expected to find. I was hearing the same unbearable loneliness Mary Shelley wrote about more than 200 years ago.

I remember hearing about a near death experience once involving a man who had been told, for as far back as he could remember, that he was not loved.

His father was a pastor.

Throughout his childhood, his father repeatedly told him there was something horrible about him. Something dark in his soul. He was told by all of his family members that he was going to hell for the way he was.

Imagine hearing that as a 4-year-old.

Then hearing it again.

And again.

And again.

Eventually, this man died in an accident and, during his near death experience, encountered Jesus. The conversation he described with Jesus was beautiful but the part I loved most was Jesus stating, “Oh nooo. You are Loved.  You are so so Loved….” 

He felt it.

He was loved.

So, so loved.

Now, if you have listened to enough near-death experiences, you have heard this before. People return again and again trying desperately to explain an indescribable love. They say they have never experienced anything like it on Earth.

I have combed through hundreds of near-death experiences.

But this man said something I had never heard anyone say before.

“I didn't know what love was.”

Think about that for a second.

Most of us can name at least one person who loved us. Maybe it was a mother. A father. A grandparent. A sibling. A spouse. A friend.

Regardless of how many people have come and gone from our lives, most of us can point to someone and say, “That person loved me.”

We have felt love.

This man hadn't.

He was almost bewildered by it.

He didn't know what love was.

And suddenly, I found myself thinking about the person who wrote those journals and it hit me….

If a human being has never truly experienced love, especially within their own family, how in the hell are they supposed to know what love is?

How are they supposed to know what it feels like?

How are they supposed to recognize it when it arrives?

How are they supposed to trust it?

And perhaps most importantly...

How are they supposed to give something to another human being that no one ever taught them how to receive?

Yet they know love exists. That's the cruel part. They have heard other people talk about it.

They have watched it in movies. They have read about it in books.

They have watched other families embrace. They have seen husbands adore their wives and wives adore their husbands. They have watched parents look at their children in a way no one ever looked at them. They’ve heard siblings talk about how much they love each other.

So they know there is something out there called love. They just don't know what it is supposed to feel like.

Imagine the craving that could create.

Almost like an addiction.

How do I get that love?

How do I make someone love me?

How do I finally get the one thing I have been starving for my entire life?

But what happens if they finally catch it?

What happens if someone actually loves them?

It's almost like catching a genie ………….without a bottle.

What the hell do you do with it?

How do you hold on to something you don't understand?

How do you trust something that every experience in your life has taught you cannot possibly be real?

It will leave.

It has to.  Right?

Everyone leaves me.

It hurts me.  I will build a fortress around my heart.

Everyone eventually discovers whatever horrible thing I was told exists inside me.

And maybe that is the greatest fear of all.

Maybe the most terrifying thing that could ever happen to someone who has never been loved...

is to finally be loved.

Because now they have something to lose.

Think about that.

After everything they have already survived, after spending a lifetime craving something they never had, imagine finally finding it and then living every day terrified that it could disappear.

That would be the real pain.

And suddenly, I thought about the story at the beginning of this blog.

I thought about the person who seemed determined to inflict such unimaginable pain on someone who genuinely loved them. The cruelty had reached a point where it appeared they were trying to psychologically destroy this person.

Why?

I am beginning to wonder if, somewhere beneath all of that rage, there was a belief far more powerful than hatred.

You cannot possibly love me.

That can't be true.

It has never been true.

Love does not stay.

Love is not safe.

And if you continue standing there insisting that you love me, then you are threatening everything I have believed about myself and the world for my entire life.

If I can make you hate me, then the world makes sense again.

So I have to prove you wrong.

I have to make you leave.

I have to drive you away.

And if you still won't leave...

I may have to burn every trace of your love from my world, because believing it was real and someday losing it might hurt more than never having been loved at all.

Read it one more time….then scroll down and look at the date.

I feel so alone…

I feel abandoned…

My heart hurts like it did when I was a child…

To God. What did I do wrong??

My heart is protected by a shield that keeps me safe but will not let Love in…

I don’t want to be the way that I am…

I am unloved…

I am a witness to everyone else’s loving future………..while I have none.

December 25, 1994

Ps. For the most part, when Scott first joined our group, he could barely speak without crying. Every other sentence seemed to bring tears to his eyes. He was completely brokenhearted over losing his wife and continued to blame himself.

But after finding that journal entry, something had clearly changed. Scott had reached a sense of closure. His entire composure was different.

He was at peace.

He told us that he had finally realized it wasn't his fault. It was not his job to fix her, and perhaps most importantly, he realized they may never have had a chance, even before he met her.

So, he stopped blaming himself.

This was also an interesting moment for me.

When Scott first shared the journal entry, I had one of those lightning bolt moments. It was almost like a montage of memories suddenly began playing in my mind. I saw people who had wronged me throughout my life.

And I mean really, really wronged me.

For a moment, it felt as though I were looking at something each of them had written in a diary when they were seven years old.

Whatever anger or angst I still carried toward them simply washed away. It was like watching a cloud slowly disappear over the horizon.

That's great for me.

It's great for Scott.

But what about her?

Sg