Good evening ladies and gentleman

First of all- when i initially had the idea for how to write for this post it was never supposed to be called “Collateral Development-” its original name was “Collateral Damage.” I am all to aware how odd it is to be opening this way telling you something not necessarily relevant, but hopefully by the end all will become clear.

Not to state the obvious, but during your life  people are going to betray you. They will steal from you, emotionally and/or financially- on any level you don’t need to be told that it won’t be a particularly enjoyable experience.  You will feel like shit, your stomach in knots wandering what happened, flicking through the memories looking for where you went wrong.  Memories of events and moments that previously did nothing but make you smile, now a source of fear and irritation, these sensations a constant companion from the moment you wake to when you lay your head on that cold pillow to rest you weary mind at the end of the day.

We are all haunted by some aspect of our past- even me. The desire to forgive and forget is so much harder than you might think, specifically the forgetting part, which can create other issues further down the line. I wander about the future all the time, often so lost in what i hope to create i can miss the beauty of what is happening right now.

I don’t like myself for trying to forget, but to register that it’s happening and not healthy is something to be proud of, i think. Almost like registering the fact you need to make a change in some way. We are all, always changing in our own way and thats good you always have to keep moving, but while remembering where you’ve come from. Our fixation on the future is the cause of so much misery not because of the potential negativity, failure and awful misery of the road most trodden. No, something much simpler, and so much scarier.

Because we don’t know.  There are times in life when you have no fucking idea whats going to happen.

This is where the issues with trust and betrayal come. You trust someone, be it as your friend, or with the delicate inner workings of your soul as your partner, only for the world, them or even at times yourself to destroy that trust entirely. Initial reactions can be of hate, but i choose to believe we are capable of hating a person for only so long. The hate subsides for them, because we want them to feel a tenth like we do, with no real way of knowing how to do that.

Eventually, the more time you spend directing all of your emotional pain and turmoil at everyone and everything else- the alarm clock, traffic, your job, your lunch hour going too fast, the car needing petrol- its all proof the world is against you and ‘this is why i shouldn’t bother with people.”

This is the next problem. I don’t think you ever really hate the person who betrayed your trust, not really. I think these days we have so many issues trusting people in a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to have secrets and even keep secrets from anyone, its you that you find yourself angry with, feeling so much rage at what has happened because you “should have seen it coming.” Most of all i feel like its very easy to hate yourself for trusting them in the first place, especially considering how hard it can be to trust anyone. Your anger for them turns into disappointment, you believed in something, in someone with more depth than you knew to be capable, on any level, for it to be blown away, like breath on a mirror. One moment it’s there, blink twice and its gone.

It feels like nothing else in the world. You wander if you are broken, if this is what it feels like. You fall lower than you have ever fell, the darkness overwhelming you so much more than you thought possible. The darkness has got you before, more times than you care to remember, but this is worse. You don’t know why or how but it is.

Yet, you survive- sort of. You wake up the next day, the next day and the day after that. You wake up, you drag yourself from a beautifully comforting slumber and even though the world is trying to drag you into the beautiful darkness- you crack on. You’re hurting, yet still you drive forward, even though nothing feels the same. Your almost going through a period of mourning, a loss of that part of you.

You hate that you care at all, but it gives you the most powerful position against the demon trying to own you,  for no matter what happens, you are still you. You’re still that good person you were before, you laugh at the same stupid things, you cry at movies like you did before, you fuck around with your friends who have seen you at your darkest and they were still there then and were there as you bounced back. You’re opinion of you may have dropped for a while, but you’re friends never stop loving you. You will still love the same as before, even if it is a little more cautiously next time around.

These times will come. You keep doing you and one day you’ll wake up and see the development, so far from where you once were. I was going to call this piece Collateral Damage, for all the pain you feel reverberates to every part of your life, you friends, your joys, your loves and hates. One single moment can so easily destroy us, if we let it.

What if we don’t let it get to us, we are all so much more than that. What if the pain doesn’t bring about collateral damage, but Collateral Development.

You become wiser, with a more learned approach to life and to yourself.

Most importantly, so very much more important than anything else.

You never have to do it alone. Never alone.

What are your thoughts on the effects of pain and the damage it can do? I’d love to hear from you.

Yours, with love as always.

DR x