When was the last time you stopped and thought about all of the devastation you have left in your wake? Do you remember the first time you broke someone’s heart and left them to pick up the pieces all alone?
Just as you have sat up at night, tortured by the thoughts of the one who got away, someone has done the exact same thing over you. It can be so easy to forget that sometimes we are the damsel in distress and others, we are the dragon storming the castle. We are the one breathing the fire and destroying someone else’s life. We are just as capable of hurting as we are of being hurt.
We are only human. We cannot expect perfection from anyone else or from ourselves. You have broken someone’s heart. You have betrayed someone’s trust. You have become the one who changed everything for someone else. We have all meant something to someone.
We can become so lost in our own pain that we can forget the times when we were the ones inflicting it. None of this makes you a bad person. All of this makes you human. It is impossible to go through this life without affecting someone else at some point. Sometimes, we change a person’s life for the better. And other times, we become the reason why their lives have to change. Everything happens for a reason, including our pain. Each difficult moment is an opportunity for another important lesson in our lives.
There are two sides to every story and therefore, two people who are just trying to get by. Maybe you feel like everything is crashing down around you, and maybe, they feel this way, too. You are not the only one who wishes they could take it all back and just start over. You are not alone in your pain. If you loved someone, and they, at some point, also loved you, there is a heart out there cursing your name and trying to move on from a devastating loss. You cannot pretend that your pain is the only pain that can exist. We will never know our true impact on another person, so we must never lessen their pain down to something so insignificant as them not feeling anything at all.
We all feel something. Even the ones who don’t always show it have a complex symphony of emotions playing a confusing song of anger, regret, and sadness throughout their souls. Just as they changed your melody, so, too have you changed theirs. Don’t pretend like you cannot hear it.
Maybe you never set out to hurt anyone. Even when we live our lives as kindly as we can, we will all have our moments when someone will take something the wrong way. There will be times when something you felt was insignificant was enough to crush someone’s entire day. It’s okay to be the villain sometimes. It’s okay to make mistakes and be a human being. We will all be the bad person in someone else’s story. Just never forget to always come back to the light.
