Why do we always hurt the ones we love?

Why do we always hurt the ones we love? It is a classic cliché question and the basis for many a good rom com. My grandmother fell this week and broke her leg, rather badly actually. Truthfully she did not fall as much as she was pushed down by my grandfather, who had managed to fall in “balance class”. The irony would be hilarious if it were not so tragic. I could not understand how in a balance class for wobbly senior citizens that they could be close enough to each other to collide. When I asked my grandmother she said they were the only 2 close because they wanted to be together. A lovely part of the depressive personality is that whenever I am emotionally overwhelmed or upset I have the instinctive reflex to retreat and be alone. There are multiple layers or aspects of this instinct, but a part of it is that I don’t want to be hurt or hurt anyone in those moments of rawness. Upon hearing my grandmother’s story I could not help but feel that it was a perfect example of the danger of emotional proximity. We always hurt the ones we love, and get hurt by them. My dark recessive side seeks affirmation that alone is safer – for me, and for the ones I would harm. And alone isn’t just the absence of people – it is more significantly the absence of connection. Intellectually I can rationalize and see the fallacy in isolating as a protection mechanism, and so I make a conscious decision to not live that way (albeit not as frequently as I probably I should). I wonder if the overwhelming instinct to isolate will ever lessen or go away. My suspicion is it is like a substance addiction and it will be the “thorn” I wrestle against always. If there is a conclusion or moral to this story, I would suggest that it is this – life is like a balance class for tipsy pensioners. Often we are ill prepared or are not equipped to handle the shakiness of life, and when we get sent stumbling sometimes it is into the people we care most about. But at the end of the day isn’t it nice to have people to stand next to in class, even if we knock heads and crash knees together? Today anyway, I choose my answer to be yes.