How I See The Colours Of The Rainbow

Chapter one - Red

    I wonder what the colour red makes you think of? It has so many meanings in so many cultures. It could be love, anger, hate, danger, warning or passion. I love the fact that’s it’s different for everyone. To me red means danger, blood and love, those concepts usually going hand in hand. This always makes me think of how difficult and complicated love is. To explain my thoughts behind this, we’d need to explore nature Vs nurture. As humans, it can be said we crave relationships and human interaction, whether that comes in the form of friendship or romance, or whatever form it may take; that is our nature, it’s part of our human desires to want a kind of friend or companion even if for only a part of our lives. How do we learn to cultivate and grow these relationships? As children we look up to our parents for guidance and we look to their relationship to learn how to treat our partners or friends.

However, not everyone grows up with kind and nurturing parents who are compassionate in their relationships and therefore grow up to learn these behaviours from their parents or learn other traits such as commitment issues and/or abandonment issues. I am one of those people. I have mistrust in relationships no matter the kind because of how I grew up watching my parents scream and shout at each other. There is a lot more to it but I don’t feel like sharing. However, you understand the concept. I struggle to make connections with people. It takes me a long time to trust them and open up to them and tell them about what’s truly hurting me. I always believe that I am going to be left behind and do my best to be closed off so they can’t see my vulnerability. It boils down to a simple ‘I have trust issues’. I see danger in my romantic partners despite my best efforts to eradicate this. Not by their fault but relationships scare me for the fact that I fear that all our time would be spent like my parents, or that they’d betray me or just leave me behind. It scares me and I hate that but this fact is something I struggle to avoid.

Relationships and danger, to me, are intrinsically linked. This doesn’t even begin to cover the fact that I fear my learned behaviours and feelings towards relationships will lead to me hurting my partner because I know that logically it is entirely possible and completely likely. What makes this worse is the fact my past partners are all people I care about because they are good people, meaning I want to do everything I can to avoid hurting them. Small pains are inevitable and I am aware of this yet it’s causing strong pain that I’m worried about and am also concerned is inevitable; because I am not a good person. I have inherited the fear of commitment, intimacy and vulnerability and I know that this has hurt people and will continue to hurt people and that scares me also. It is my hope that one day I will overcome these fears yet logically I know that at this point in time it will be difficult. The fear that I will never be able to change this also consumes me, forcing me to believe that I can’t trust anyone.

Hopefully, I will be able to find a solution and it’s my sincerest hope that anybody who feels this way can also find some kind of closure to help them connect with others without much or any mistrust. I understand the pain and fear toward hurting friends and partners and I’m sorry for whatever may have caused you feel such a way and I only hope that you find what you need to find genuine and trusting connection in whatever form you wish.