Damaged as in crushed, broken, soiled, torn............damaged as in wounded, bleeding, bruised, battered, dying. A damaged child am I, furtively trying to convince the world that I have been untouched!I find that beautiful. And sad.
Someone who is defective can not be fixed, only dealt with and replaced. When you see yourself as defective, there is no hope for a better future. So many of us have been convinced we are defective. We can never amount to anything, never expect rescue or healing or a better life.
Someone who is damaged - maybe they can be repaired. They'll never be whole, but maybe they can be 'good enough'. Like a vehicle that's been wrecked and repaired (wordplay - wrecked, wretched - something is speaking to me there), the damage is still there, even if you can't see it. Too many people go through life damaged, but repaired enough that no one can see it.
But wounded... wounds heal. Medicine will heal wounds. Time heals wounds. And when they have healed, it can be as if they never were. The wounds may scar, but then scars fade, and the hurt is gone. Can we upgrade our hurting to wounded? I mean 'we' the world, not 'we' my system, in this case.
I see my splintering into what is now nine parts as damage. I have repaired a lot of the damage - most people would never know that I have a black spot on my 'title'. We function as a whole individual all the time. Only occasionally is there a mysterious creak in our psyche that indicates there may be something behind the shiny paint and repaired dents. I don't expect the splintering to go away - honestly I don't even want it to; I like being multiple. But I am aware the damage is there, and is simply repaired, not wiped away.
Other things, like the reasons why I splintered in the first place, I think are wounds. Ones that have, for the most part, healed to scars. I can look at the scar from my teen marriage and say, "I remember when that happened," without reliving the pain of the experience. It's simply a scar. Maybe one day, even the scars will fade away into a simple entry in my past.
How about you? What sort of damage do you carry around? What wounds do you have that you see healing as time goes by?
You're so right, it is beautiful in its own way and very sad, as is your post. The saddest part to me is that others feel this way today and will tomorrow and the next.
ReplyDeleteFor me it is a distant memory, a place I moved through in my journey to be free of the chain that bound me to such feelings. I found the key to unlock the mystery behind my desperate clutching to feelings of unworthiness and with it's discovery, the feelings fled.
I might also mention that being free had nothing to do with integration. That was not my journey and will never be although it can be something that happens spontaneously with little notice.
There are still walls concealing immense pain but those parts are healing in their own time. If they so choose to release the pain or maybe to let it go, whatever, each is honored as an important part of the whole. That's the only thing that matters really, we are one whole human being functioning, loving, caring, weeping, crying, laughing and living our way through life.
Thanks for the birthday wishes. It's hard to imagine I have lived this long especially considering the battles my mind and my body have been through.