The double-edged sword

I've been thinking lately about getting my feelings hurt by people that I opened myself up to and trusted. It's happened a few times in the last few years, sometimes with eventual reconciliation, sometimes not. What's odd about it is that for about 95% of my life, I never really experienced such rejection and pain that probabloy a lot of people experience. I think it's because for about 95% of my life, I never made myself vulnerable the way I have in the last few years.

For most of my life, I just never opened up to other people. I never really trusted anyone enough to do that. Instead, I kept my feelings locked up tight, and no one ever had a clue what was going on in my head. Thinking about it now, I realize it was just a way to protect myself from being hurt. If I never trusted anyone with anything, I couldn't get hurt by them. And to tell the truth, it worked for a long time.

A couple of years ago, though, something clicked, and I changed. A lot. I became a much more open person, someone that shares a lot more of myself than I ever did in the past. Some would argue I share too much, and I suppose there is a happy medium somewhere, but when I find someone I trust, I tend to open myself up and become very vulnerable. This is not always the best decision, I'm finding.

While I would not go back to the closed up version of myself in a million years, being open has its drawbacks. For one thing, it's easy for me to get my feelings hurt when I share deep things with someone and then they turn out not to be who I thought they were. I also tend to feel like I have invested a lot in someone when I share my deepest thoughts with someone, and when they don't appear to feel the same connection with me, I end up feeling foolish and naive.

I'm not saying this has happened to me a lot in the last few years, but more than it ever did while I was protecting myself from being hurt by being a closed book. Often, I don't think it's intentional or purposely hurtful on the other person's part. It's just that the connection I feel is not mutual, and that alone tends to hurt my self-esteem.

I'm not entirely sure this experience is an altogether bad thing. Sure, it hurts, but it also gives me some perspective I've never had before. In some ways, it eventually makes me develop a thicker skin. I don't want to be one of those people that "doesn't care what other people think", because that's a lot like I was before, and my life is much richer now than it was before.

I think if I can get through this with some of those people that I feel have hurt me, then I think we will understand each other better than before and can move on as better friends eventually. Or I'm being naive. I'd like to think it's the former, though.