—EVERYBODY TALKS, EVEN IF NO ONE LISTENS

 

 

THE INNER VOICE OF LOVE   /    Henri J. M. Nouwen

 

 

To my surprise, I never lost the ability to write. In fact, writing became a part of my struggle for survival. It gave me the little distance from myself that I needed to keep from drowning in my despair.

 

Within me, there was one long scream coming from a place I didn’t know existed, a place full of demons.

 

I became possessive, needy, and dependent, and when the friendship finally had to be interrupted, I fell apart. I felt abandoned, rejected, and betrayed. Indeed, the extremes touched each other.

 

I knew that I had been set on a road where nobody could walk with me.

 

When I returned, I reread all I had written during the time of my “exile.” It seemed so intense and raw that I could hardly imagine it would speak to anyone but me.

 

There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because you are inexhaustible. You have to work around it, so that gradually the abyss closes.

Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it. There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.

 

Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people’s response to your experience of abandonment, the more you feel exposed to ridicule.   

 

No one person can fulfill all your needs.

 

As long as you can live amid your emotions, passions, and feelings, you will continue to experience loneliness, jealousy, anger, resentment, and even rage, because those are the most obvious responses to rejection and abandonment. 

 

When others stop loving you, you do not have to stop loving them.

 

One day you will be free to give gratuitous love, a love that does not ask for anything in return. 

 

Increasingly, you have come to see your body as an enemy that has to be conquered.

 

Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential.

 

You have to live through your pain gradually and thus deprive it of its power over you.

 

When you keep reliving painful events of the past, you can feel victimized by them.

 

Your inexhaustible need for affection is an addition. It rules your life and makes you a victim.

 

Whenever you feel lonely, you must try to find the source of this feeling. You are inclined either to run away from your loneliness or to dwell in it. When you run away from it, your loneliness does not really diminish; you simply force it out of your mind temporarily. When you start dwelling in it, your feelings only become stronger, and you slip into deep depression 

 

Simply start by admitting that you cannot cure yourself.

 

Look at Rembrandt and van Gogh. They trusted their vocations and did not allow anyone to lead them astray. They didn’t bend over backward to please their friends or enemies. Both led their lives in poverty, but both left humanity with gifts that could heal the minds and hearts of many generations. Think of those two men and trust that you, too, have a unique vocation that is worth claiming and living out faithfully.

 

What is your pain? Is it the experience of not receiving what you most need? Is it the place of emptiness where you feel sharply the absence of the thing you most desire?

 

But there is another way. You can tell your story from the place where it no longer dominates you. You can speak about it with a certain distance and see it as the way to your present freedom.

 

When suddenly, you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. Healing is not a straight line. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don’t say to yourself, “All is lost. I have to start over again.” This is not true. What you have gained, you have gained.