When most people in this day and age have lived for awhile, they are bound to have accumulated a variety of scars. Most of mine are from surgeries. Even though there is a lengthy section on scars in Wikipedia on scars I find all the technical jargon boring and beside the point.
I was conversing with a friend the other day and he was speaking of emotional pain, left over from 10 years ago that shouldn't have any affect on his life now, but do. He called what he was feeling emotional scars. For some reason, I had never considered that before. I decided that I had a lot of them myself. (I imagine he was sorry he brought that subject up because it gave me ammunition for a whole metaphoric rant.)
Scars are leftovers from an injury. Scaring is a normal part of healing. For instance, I have an abdominal scar that is 27 years old, aside from it being big and ugly, I have had no pain or dysfunction in my gut for a couple decades. It is completely healed, but you can still see clearly the evidence of the surgery. This can be likened to times in my past when I was emotionally hurt. It happened long ago, but I can still see and feel the scar, and every time I do, I remember the pain.
Some emotional scars leave collateral damage. The injury seems healed, but it may be the cause of some malfunction in another area. For instance, I have another scar from knee surgery 5 or 6 years ago that is probably healed but there is nerve damage and a numb spot on my ankle. The numb spot may be like a trigger for a bad memory. It may completely heal some day, and no longer trigger pain, but maybe not.
Sometimes a wound never heals. I've heard about special treatment centers for wounds that refuse to heal. Could this be likened to rehab centers for unhealed injuries?
I read somewhere that if you are carrying resentments you are still angry and thus have not forgiven. I disagree with that. I think a resentment is an emotional scar you are carrying. My psyche is fully functional, I have forgiven and am trying to move on, but I will always carry that emotional scar.
Hearts carry scars but still function, until, that is, there gets to be gets so much scar tissue, then it becomes something else.
Wow Charla this is deep. It explains a lot. I believe it's okay to forgive [it] but never forget, because it's part of me. (I don't really know how to use brackets, but hope it makes sense here)
ReplyDeleteWow Charla this is deep. It explains a lot. I believe it's okay to forgive [it] but never forget, because it's part of me. (I don't really know how to use brackets, but hope it makes sense here)
ReplyDelete