Stay away, it hurts too much

Sometimes you wonder just how much sadness your heart can really take.

Another one of the Greencastle gang's friends died this Sunday. He was 20. My heart breaks for my friends--- that's the third friend that they've lost in a year.
I just don't understand. I know life is full of sadness and un-fairness.... but sometimes I wish there was a way to make sense of the senseless.

Diana wrote something in her Live Journal that struck me. I won't share her exact words because I don't have permission to do so, but she talked about keeping a distance from people as a defense mechanism- that if you keep them at arm's length, it won't hurt as much if you end up losing them too.

Whoa. That brought me up short and got me to thinking about my reactions and relationships over the last year. Have I been doing that? Keeping a wall between me and anyone who wants to get too close?

*smack*

(That was me running into the wall.)

That answers that.

I wonder if your heart can ever be broken so many times that eventually there's more scar tissue than heart. And each loss, each death, each hurt just builds up enough over time that there's too much to get beyond. The truth of the matter is that I started building that wall long before Emily died. Her death was the cement that firmed it up, but those bricks were being put in place a long time ago. I think that was the biggest problem in those last few months before she died, that I had just had enough of her anger and her bitterness and her depression that I started shutting her out so she couldn't hurt me anymore. What I realize now is that by doing that, I shut all of her out. Her hurtfulness couldn't touch me, but then again- her moments of sweetness and the "real" Emily beneath all that couldn't reach me either. And that's the guilt I've been dealing with, how nasty I was to her.
In talking to my Pastor the other night, I realized too that I've got some foundation blocks on my wall from when my friend Judy was killed about 10 years ago. Judy was the neatest woman. She had the most beautiful voice. When we lived in Alabama, I wanted to join the adult choir. I might have been in 7th grade or so. They started me off in the soprano section so I could sit with my mother, but I've got a much lower range than she does. So I ended up singing Alto with Judy. She was my choir buddy. And then she was my confirmation mentor. She never treated me like the obnoxious kid that I was. She listened alot. And I think alot of my love for music and for singing was partly because of her influence.
After we moved, her husband shot and killed her and then killed himself. I was devastated. It took almost six years before I could bring myself to sing in the choir again. I didn't realize until many years later just how much her death had affected me.
I look back and realize that it was about that time that I started really keeping people at arm's length. Oh, I had friends in high school. But no one that I could really bare my soul to.

In the last couple of years I've really become close with my cousin Lauren. But lately I've even been keeping away from her. I couldn't bear if anything happened to Lauren. So if I stay away, it won't hurt as much.

Diana really hit the nail on the head.

But there's that "on the other hand". Oh, what you miss out on by keeping people out! If I had known a year ago that Emily was going to die in less than a month, what would I have done? Would I have shut her out completely, or would I have spent every moment with her I could, sharing every secret, even though knowing how devastating it would be when she was gone?
I think it would be a hell of alot easier to have dealt with than all this lingering guilt.


I guess now I have a choice. Do I leave it there and continue to hide behind it, or start figuring out how to take it down? Do I want to take it down? It took a long time to put it up, and those bricks are awful heavy.

I think I know my answer. I just don't know if I like it.