I'm about to say "that hurts!" (almost)

Why is it so hard for so many of us to say, “That hurts”?

I am not just talking about finding our voice when in the orbit of an aggressive person. No. I am talking about life. Why is it so hard to speak up, to articulate our emotional pain, to indicate when something or someone hurts us?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I have been hurling that trite childhood lesson. “Use your words,” I tell Zoe this when she is frustrated because she can't get her toy or milk or when she is upset about something a bit more complicated. Use your words.

I tell her this and I mean it. Words are powerful things. Here, I weave words together and this makes me very happy.

Recently, someone really upset me. This person didn’t do anything truly vicious or conspicuously conniving (well I was just being nice here). I don’t think this person intended to make me sad. I’m not even sure this person has any clue that I was (and still am) sad. But things this person did and didn’t do, said and didn’t say, hurt me. And I didn’t say anything. No, I rolled around in my hurt, letting it seep in, and then sulked away.

Now, I am not a super-confrontational person, but I am not a doormat either. More often than not, I say something, something diplomatic when I feel so inclined. Customarily, I do not sweep things under that proverbial carpet. I am not one to let things fester.

But. Here I am. Being a doormat. Sweeping things under that soiled existential carpet. Letting stuff fester. Not using my words. Rather, using my words, different ones, to bemoan the fact that I don’t know how to use my words when they matter most. (Uh oh. I just had the thought that maybe we sentimental writers-wanna-be are the biggest cowards of all in so far as we type and type and type because we are too scared to actually say these things aloud to people we know and love? I don’t like this thought, so I will ignore it. For now.)

Why is it so hard, so impossible sometimes, to say two simple words: That hurts? Maybe because saying these words isn’t so simple at all? Maybe it’s because we think we somehow deserve the pain? Maybe it is because we are afraid of graying blue skies? Maybe because we think there is something instructive in feeling pain, that there is something to be gained? Maybe it’s because we believe, if unconsciously, that fleeting sadness is like temporarily sore back muscles, hard to weather in the moment but a means to something greater and truer and less twisted?

Why is it so hard (for me, for some of us) to utter those two simple words? And if it isn’t hard for you to say these words, please share your wisdom.. please..