Too Far.

We all know that fights can get ugly.

We cry, we yell, we lose our fucking minds sometimes in the heat of fighting for what we want, fighting to be heard, fighting to get something heavy off of our chests. 

Sometimes it seems as though the more you care about someone, the uglier the fights can be.

Is this because they know you well enough to know exactly what your sore spots are? 

Because they love you so much that they care enough to really fight passionately with you, desperately trying to fix whatever is broken? 

Or is it because the more we know someone, the more we know their faults, their cracks, the things about them that we don't particularly like, and these things, over time, begin to stand out more in our minds than the good things?

With the passing of years, does it become harder to recognize the spectacular and fascinating things about a person, simply because they become common and routine? So much so that their faults, the things about them that we probably see a fraction of the time that we see their positive attributes, begin to stand out so much, that in the heat of an argument, they become nothing more than the sum total of all their mistakes, all their vices, all their short comings? 

We've all said things in arguments that we didn't mean, and probably even more of us have said things in arguments that we did mean, but never should have said, because honesty is rarely a good reason for cruelty.

After the dust settles and everything is out there on the table, is there a point when you've been too honest, or too careless with your words, that there's no going back? 

A point when you've crossed a line in someone's heart, and they just can't look at you the same anymore.

After a recent fight with a loved one, I couldn't help but wonder: how far is too far? 

Maybe it all comes down to who you are, what your triggers are, what soft and vulnerable parts of yourself exist in places that should not be trampled on. Areas of yourself that are so delicate, if they're struck with just the right force, timing, and swiftness, they harden to that person forever.

Maybe it all comes down to whether or not what was said was true. If the person meant it, and really sees you that way.

Maybe relationships disintegrate over words said in a fight, if those words were crushing, and also honest. 

If they accidentally revealed the truth behind something that means the two of you can no longer continue down the same path together in life. Perhaps you could have, for a while, when they were the only ones who knew how they really felt, and you were following along behind them in blind, blissful, ignorance. But now that it's there, sitting between you and this person that you love, there's no going back to that.

All you can do is hope that you can live with what you've learned.

That the light that's been shed on your relationship, and the way the other person feels about it - and you - isn't so blinding, that you have to turn away, and never look back.