Damage: (n) injury or harm that reduces value or usefulness

Hello, stranger.

Pardon me, I don’t know your name.

I’m not really trying to introduce myself. More or less, I just want you to understand my position.

I’m not sure if I would be gregarious even if the option were available to me. Since you are unfamiliar to my world, I feel compelled to go slowly—perhaps stop.

It’s nothing personal.

I see you’re a little put off and perhaps don’t understand my misgivings, but that’s because you haven’t lived in my world or my time, surrounded by a topsy-turvy environment, nurturing terror.

There are blessings.

But as people, both religious and secular, will concur, the trials and difficulties greatly outweigh the payoffs.

It may seem like a negative way of looking at one’s lifespan, but still, all in all, it is safer to embrace caution and to ignore any temptation to take a risk by pursuing new relationships, new friends, ethnicities or environments.

Understand?

Haven’t you been hurt?

Healed of the wound, the scar and internal blistering is still sensitive.

Is it not nature’s way—to give us a constant reminder of our foolishness, our sins and our naivete by leaving behind bruises and discoloration?

Perhaps you’re a fine person.

Let me rephrase that. I don’t know you’re a fine person. That’s why I must treat you as if you’re not. I simply can’t afford to take on any new conflicts.

I have damage.

It has been addressed, discussed and I suppose might seem covered by the grace of the Divine. But still, it quietly lies within me, warning me of the many troubles of those who wander too far from reclusion.

Perhaps there will be a day when you will be better known to me or my damage will once and for all be contained.

Perhaps not.

Here is what I see:

After meeting thousands of people, we eliminate all the comers to two or three we claim to hold dear, but still maintain our intimacy at arm’s length.