I saw this post today and felt impelled to talk about it. As
an online hotline worker, I have actually talked about this quite a bit, and I
address it in one of the speeches I give. Also as an online hotline worker
helping people in crisis, I do know this, and I do not ever forget it.
Sometimes the conversation just does not have time to fit this topic. So here
is a commentary.
People will ask me questions like, “Will I ever be me
again?” or “Will I get over this?” Or they make statements saying they won’t
ever be the same again. In many ways this is very, very true. As a survivor, I
honestly believe life can always get better and that we truly do heal. However,
healing does not mean we go back to being exactly as we were.
Being accident prone and apparently incapable of riding a
bicycle well, I have many many scars on my body. There is one on my upper arm
from burning myself with a pan. It hurt like hell and took a while to heal. The
scar is just a white line now. Yet, it means the world to me. My son’s is best
friends with twins who also have an older brother. They, along with their
parents and many other friends and family, were at my house for my son’s grad
party one June a few years ago. I was running the thing and most parents hung
out in the tent and had a blast sharing stories and dining. Their mom was one
of the few parents who participated in what was a rather rough and tumble day
of physical and mental challenges. Okay, I don’t really throw parties just to
hang out – this was a Survivor/Amazing Race style all day all night event. She
was amazing – as were all of the kids – such a great time.
Six months later, she was diagnosed with a sudden onset and
severe form of cancer. It was devastating. A couple of months later, she was
receiving in home nursing around the clock. It came to be her last night. I
love these boys – with all of my heart and always will. I talked to her
briefly, and I hope she knows this always. Life got very difficult that night,
and the boys all came to my house for a break while they decided whether they
wanted to be there for her final moments or remember her only living. I was
baking these crazily good loaves of bread stuffed with yumminess while we all
hung out and talked and tried to forget things for a few minutes. That is when
I took the tray out and burned my arm. No big deal, it never really hurt or
anything. I usually forget it is even there. Frankly I was and still am
surprised the scar is so prominent. Or maybe I am not, because when I look down
on that scar, my heart is filled with all of those memories and all of the love
I have for them. I am filled with empathy, worry, and hope for them and would
take far more damage in hopes that they heal in their hearts and have wonderful
lives. It is a scar far worth bearing and reminds me of my extended family and
my son’s extended brothers. I may never have been so close to them had we not
gone through this together. Would I change the loss of their mother? Certainly.
Would I get rid of the scar if there were a cream or surgery? Certainly not.
They are a part of me and hopefully made me a better person or at least the
person I am today. If I changed one thing about my own life, I am terrified I
would not be who I am now.
I also have scars that aren’t physical or visible – a history
of sexual assault and abuse that did not leave scars I can point to on my body.
However, I can honestly say if it meant not knowing if I would be as good or
better than I am now – if there was even one single chance I would be less of a
person – there is not a single thing I would change from my past - and it is a past, let me tell you. I am
good and I do "good" - regardless of any horrors I’ve been through.
The point of all of this is that yes, people who are trying
to help do understand there are scars, but they are scars we can work through,
scars that will change who we are, scars that will cause us so much heartache
and pain. BUT the impact and severity of the wounds that caused those scars,
whether external or internal, will heal as we do. We will find ourselves
overcoming the destructiveness of the pain. In some cases instead of waking or
walking in pain, we will start to only notice it at times, then hardly at all,
and then we will be whole again and healed – changed but healed. In some cases
the heartache might always be present and get worse, but we will turn it into
something constructive, because we know we must survivor through it. We can
never go back – but that is true of anything good or anything bad. Every aspect
of living is gone in an instant – but we recover. We were taught to tie our
shoes, and we just tie our shoes now and think nothing of its importance like
we did as children. We may have learned to drive or to do things that are
second nature to us. We generally don’t dwell on it, because it is something we
do regularly.
So, yes, we are wounded and in some ways those wounds heal.
But we survive, we live through it, and even if it still breaks our hearts, we
heal, scars and all and become who we are now, scars and all. Why? Because we
are survivors, survivors who can thrive if we can get through living with the
scars.
