Why we need the dark

I’m not sure I entirely trust people who haven’t had their heart broken.

There’s something about that agony that, though it may lead one to making temporary claims about the walls that are going to be meticulously built to protect oneself from such future anguish, actually leads one to recognize what you had the next time it comes along.

It is something about experiencing loss that allows you to really know how to value someone.

One of the lessons I remember most clearly from high school is the concept of an inherent dichotomy. It seemed so poetic at the time, the notion that you can’t know light without dark, good without evil.

I’ve come to realize that this idea is not just poetic, but seemingly a basic fact of humanity. It probably displays itself most interestingly in our odd need to be hurt by someone in order to be able to experience love and respect with someone else.

I believe that we all need a bad relationship (this can be a friendship, although I’m using the romantic example) to be a good partner. Hardly anyone is good at starting relationships from scratch. You have no idea what you want, and you have to fall back to other models, be it parents, siblings, whatever, to imitate, or else you are traipsing through the dark, hands out, waiting for your eyes to become adjusted. You need to experience hands on what you don’t want to drive you to know and get what you do want.

My first serious boyfriend falls under the category of really really bad boyfriend. Like epic, beating my self-esteem into an utter sludge type of boyfriend. Even though we broke up a decade ago I still tense up when I hear his name—that kind of boyfriend. Controlling, mean-spirited, demanding. We’re talking yelling at me and storming away if he saw me wearing the wrong clothes or forcing me to end friendships. And don’t even get me started on the 3am surprise visits accompanied by suicide threats after I didn’t take him back when he broke up with me the fourth time.

Good times.

Granted, this is something no 15-year old girl, particularly one as insecure as myself at the time, should ever go through. But I watch my friends going through such miserable relationships now, and I thank my lucky stars I got it out of the way early. I may have lost my virginity to a douchebag, but at least I never moved in with one. Plus, even at such a young age, I was able to do some reflecting with some distance and pull out what was so miserable about that relationship. I could then use that as proof of what I would never, ever put up with again—and it remained at the forefront of my mind as a prominent guide for many years.

It took being treated like crap to make me know how amazing it felt to be treated well.

Although the bulk of that lesson was learnt at a young age, the whole notion of the importance of such dichotomies still pops up every now and again. It is being listened to, and heard, when you used to be ignored.
And it is being seen at a deeper level when you used to be defined by your surface.