Old Wounds

I've always seen life in terms of battle except that my armies have faced far more inanimate obstacles than actual enemies. Those few who see things similarly understand that this is not paranoia. I was taught to trust no one except those picked out by my parents and then I found that the world is a friendlier place than I dared hope. Unfortunately, this world has plenty of opportunity for conflict. Whether we seek out battle or scout out a path of least resistance, we all get hurt. It's inevitable. Most wounds are minor and we get over them so completely that we are able to shovel a layer of dirt over them. We do this because even minor wounds are painful and we wish to forget the equally painful circumstances behind them.

I have taken a longer road healing my wounds and taking the time to learn from them. Some questioned why I would do this when it was such a harder road. Recently, I've come to believe that I had to take the longer and harder road because I'd used up my quota of dirt and shovels. I had no ability to disbelieve my wounds left. I had faced a betrayal worse than anything I could truly explain. In modern war, agents and double agents steal information and spread disinformation respectively. The traitors in my ranks didn't have to sneak in because one gave birth to me and the other was my first role model. They taught me that I was weak and that I was many terrible things. They taught me that my birth defect was shameful and that my failure to control it was inconsiderate and worse.

Life went on and I formed crucial friendships and alliances. I gained a lot of new wounds. Those new wounds always seemed to drag me down more than they did others. Hell! I ran into someone on Facebook and realized that I hadn't thought of her in a decade or two yet the thought of how she treated me brought out a moment or two of petty rage. I remembered that we were kids and that she didn't know what she was doing. I didn't even know how she had hurt me for a few more years. This is the new me and not the version she knew so I congratulated her on her hard work/good fortune, didn't even bother with a friend request and left off telling her that I always knew she was pretty. If I can forgive and then eventually feel some sort of renewed effort with the guy who defined the words "worst enemy" for decades, I can forgive a slight broken heart from 1988.

That was my point. Other people might not have cared at all. I can remember a damning amount of detail from what even I admit was a minor time in a part of my life I keep locked away. Why was I so desperate at such a young age? In the interests of honesty, I'm talking about a girl who grew up to be a supermodel to some degree of "supermodelness" and that's what the congrats were for. Desperate is not a reflection on her but on me. I was that desperate because I did not have parental affection that I could depend upon. My deeper and well buried wounds betrayed me in little ways and they betray me now.

Melissa is off today but needs to go out to say goodbye to a coworker. She asked me if I wanted anything while she was out and I told her that she could guess. I want alcohol. Good beer would be nice but I seem to drink it too fast and that thought sent me into an ugly downward spiral. "I eat too much, I drink too much...too much!" Depending on how well I heard it, that's either a quote or a paraphrase from the Dave Matthews' Band. I am recovering from overexerting myself while already down so I want extra painkillers in a nice and tasty liquid form. It only makes sense yet I link it to the fact that eating is one of the few dependable pleasures my damaged body will allow and pull out my parents' opinion that I am a glutton. A sleepy Melissa had to pull me back from the brink of...well nothing except a lot of physical and psychological pain. Back when we first met, it would have been a lot worse.

The fact is that my old wounds are similar to my disability in a few ways. One is that they will never truly go away yet they have gotten "little b better" over the course of my marriage. I still recall the wondrous feeling of meeting a group of people in college who wanted me around. I'll use first names only but Bob, Evan, Kate and Maggie wanted me around. If I were gone for more than a day, Bob or Evan would find me and bring me back in. It took them the better part of two semesters to convince me that it was possible to want me around. I spent a solid month looking for the proverbial punchline. That group broke up due to no fault of mine yet I blamed myself for years afterward.

Honestly, the shortest member of the Big Three was the first young woman to make me feel safe in my friendship with her. I loved her like a sister and our age difference let me sort out that odd difference between her and other girls. She was simply too important to waste any misunderstood feelings on. It's painful to remember the awful contrast between her sisterly love and the scorn of my birth family. It was more comfortable to hang out with her and her boyfriend singing along to oldies music than it was to spend any time at home. I believed that I was unworthy of her presence because I had been taught all about my flaws in great detail. I felt unworthy yet unaccountably safe and secure with the combination forming an addictive drug.

I can look back now and realize that she was a good person but not quite the super-saint I believed her to be. The truth is that hanging out with me is not torture to be endured. Believing that she was some super-special person more tolerant than a bus of nuns allowed me to hang on to the damage still being inflicted at home. Her boyfriend was every bit as much the friend she was but he wasn't blonde and pretty like she was. I'm sure his boyfriend or husband - I'm unsure of their formal status but they've been together longer than Melissa and I so they deserve some respect! - would disagree. It's all a matter of perspective and my perspective was skewed by abuse.

So, here I am baring my soul for the world yet again. I don't do it to punish my parents. I can forgive them especially since they always seemed to be trying with everything they had to do the right thing. Perhaps inadvertently, they prepared me to be tough enough to handle year after year of making it through the agony minute by minute. Also, what little I know of their childhoods suggest to me that they were always fighting against their own current of abuse.

No, my intended audience is not anyone who would be hurt by what I have to say. I am writing to that kid asking what on earth he did to deserve the pain he's feeling. You don't deserve it, pal. Just take that inadequate bit of relief and do what you can to improve the world. I'm writing to all those people suffering from chronic pain. I read something about recent suicides from just outside my personal area of influence and I ask you all to endure another day with me. Our bodies are betraying us and there is a natural urge to want to abandon the sinking ship. I ask that you endure and hope for a miracle with me. It need not be the cure to whatever ails you. Sometimes, the hello from an old friend is miracle enough for one day.

Finally, I write this to those people who probably didn't mean to hurt me quite so much many years ago like the supermodel girl. You acted as you believed you should and I do not fault you for that anymore. You just might want to know why I treated simple bruises to my ego like broken bones. You should know that most of the damage was there already. You did not do worse than inflict paper cuts on me and you had the right to be weirded out by my overreactions. You could not have known just as I never knew what truly motivated you. We never exchanged shoes to walk the proverbial mile.

Now I've opened up some old infected wounds trusting to sunlight and fresh air for a little more healing. Please pardon the smell. The air will clear in a little while like it has every other time. If I've stirred up guilt in anyone, I absolve you in the name of "Boston '88" and the Senior Prom and the many private conversations that touched my heart. We're all human in every sense of the word.