What Does Love and Hurt Teach?

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.... You give them a piece of you... your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love." -- Neil Gaiman

Why do we  put ourselves out there so another can rip us apart?  So another can take that little glass splinter and work it into our heart and hurt us and make us bleed?  How can a hurt be so physically painful at times? 


Those were questions I never had to ask myself before I met M.  Now they're questions I have to answer.  Unfortunately I don't really know how to answer them.  I gave him a piece of me, I let him inside my heart and my soul.  I trusted him enough not to hurt me.  And that's exactly what he did.  


It's been almost 7 weeks since we've seen each other.  And you know what?  I'm stronger than I was before. Pain and hurt teaches you, just as much as love does.  Love taught me that I can let someone into my heart that I wasn't planning on.  It taught me that my heart is big enough for more than one person in my life.  And what did the pain and hurt teach me?  That I'm a strong person.  That I can get back up and move on with my life, grateful for the time we had together.  That no one, NO ONE, can make me a person that I'm not supposed to be.  No one can beat me down unless I let them.  No one can make me feel worthless unless I let them.


I'm a strong, independent, confidant woman.  And I am so blessed, yes blessed, that I was taught these things the hard way.  Because of him, I grew as a person, I grew as a wife and I grew as a submissive.  


So thank you M....thank you for loving me and for hurting me.  I am a stronger person today because of it.