It's at times like these that I feel blessed for having my own website, where i can lay out my thoughts without censorship or the constant pressure of conforming to the hivemind for upvotes and shares, only to have my carefully laid out thoughts pushed off the main page by the incessant influx of new content. What I'm about to say came to me on a chill December 1, 2019 evening in a flash of realization as I browsing memes and writing an article on O-Yoroi, Japanese armor made for horse archers.
The strength with which this realization struck me is unmatched by anything I have ever felt. In short, the title reveals what it is but it's so much more than that. It feels like I suddenly got not just the questions that will be on a quiz but the answers too and was also blessed with photographic memory to never forget any of them.
When you go about your life in the world, you will experience random insults and injuries that will leave their mark on you. No matter how hard you try to ignore them, they pile up and create this scar tissue on the mind and heart. If repeated enough times, these scars turn a living, loving and laughing person into a lifeless, loveless and lurid one. When someone loves you, that someone will try to protect you from these injuries and teach you how to deal with them.
If you're hurting, it's because of two things that have to do with random harm coming your way:
Once you see how you can be surrounded by people yet still be hurting, you'll realize what I mean by "true love" and have a glimpse of what I experienced on that evening – if none of them want to do anything to shield you from harm or inform you about it, then none of them love you.
I don't mean this to be a death sentence or a way to push you deeper into a cycle of self-loathing, but simply to inform you what it means to love and to be loved. When you're loved, there are people around you who fight to shield you from random harm and also fight to help you restore yourself.
The reason why these people around you don't know what to do with you or how to help you is because they haven't experienced this random harm coming their way. Note the key word here: random. It was just that RNG went against you and you experienced random harm. It wasn't your fault, it wasn't a demonic presence that did it or a malevolent God, it was just random, that's all.
As a hurting person, you now have a wonderful sensitivity to love and especially absence of love. Those who know you're hurting but do nothing to protect you from random harm do not love you, no matter how much they profess otherwise or how pretty or rich they are. So, now the goal is clear and the objective is quite simple – find such a person that you want to protect from random harm and that wants to protect you from random harm. Then, have lots and lots of babies and also protect them from random harm.
Sadly, we can't do much to protect others from random harm but we can do a lot to protect ourselves. Minimize the random chance of you being targeted by the world by not attracting unwanted attention and not acting out when something bad happens. Remember that predators seek out the wounded ones to attack; those who are wounded and cry for help are most often the first ones to get culled.