My second made up for it in spades - it was ugly with accusations and abuse, the kind of hatred only a finely tuned passion can render - an experience that leaves the worst kind of scars.
So I know a little about breakups - enough not to take sides or get involved - and this latest, spread over the pages of the social networking site like jam on warm toast, is ugly, bitter, frightening. In less than a year, two picture perfect people violently in love have become vicious enemies and those who care about them are caught up in a nightmare of pain, lies and betrayal. The malice is wrenching and heartbreaking, splitting a family to pieces and spreading like a virus. Ex-wives have been dragged in to the battle, along with charges of theft and fraud and infidelity and stalking. It would seem nothing is off limits or too private to make public and whatever the truth may be, it isn't likely to do anyone involved any good anymore. It's become a win at any cost, take no prisoners kind of campaign with if you're not with me, you're against me challenges being issued from both sides. I watch friends lining up on either side and think that there will be no winners or losers here, just two people determined to inflict as much damage on each other as they possibly can. The wreckage will be widespread.
Discovering people we care about are not what they appear to be or who we want them to be can be decidedly provoking. We conceal our true selves for a variety of reasons, I suppose, vanity or pride or self delusion or fear. In some cases, we hide out of habit or shame or even the risk of being found out. I try to believe that most of us - politicians and Wall Street excepted - slip into these disguises for superficial reasons and cause relatively little harm but now and again, someone with a a truly dark agenda slithers in among us. And wonder of wonders, a great many of us reach passionately for attachments with them and willingly keep their secrets. It says as much about us as it does about them, maybe more.
How or when this particular split will end can't be known. Whether there will be change or healing can't be known. But of this I am sure - there are already victims and there will be more - if there's one thing our true selves are exquisitely good at, it's keeping secrets. And if there's another, it's self-defense.
The heart that can longer love passionately, must with fury hate ~ Jean Baptiste Racine
How dark.
How tragic.
How true.
Discovering people we care about are not what they appear to be or who we want them to be can be decidedly provoking. We conceal our true selves for a variety of reasons, I suppose, vanity or pride or self delusion or fear. In some cases, we hide out of habit or shame or even the risk of being found out. I try to believe that most of us - politicians and Wall Street excepted - slip into these disguises for superficial reasons and cause relatively little harm but now and again, someone with a a truly dark agenda slithers in among us. And wonder of wonders, a great many of us reach passionately for attachments with them and willingly keep their secrets. It says as much about us as it does about them, maybe more.
How or when this particular split will end can't be known. Whether there will be change or healing can't be known. But of this I am sure - there are already victims and there will be more - if there's one thing our true selves are exquisitely good at, it's keeping secrets. And if there's another, it's self-defense.
The heart that can longer love passionately, must with fury hate ~ Jean Baptiste Racine
How dark.
How tragic.
How true.
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