| the bandaged place |
Jun 2, 2008 4:26 pm
Mood: thoughtful, 517 Views | "Don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you." Rumi
In my marriage there were many open wounds. Large, huge, gapping, festering, infected, wounds. I allowed them to happen. I put the knife in the hands of the n-ex and didn't back away....until it was too late, and the wounds were there.
I did nothing to stop it. Sometimes I got out the Band-Aids and iodine and tried to treat the wounds myself, but I always allowed the wounds to be reopened, and new ones to be inflicted.
Then one day I made him leave. I told him you or me but someone will go. He didn't want to have the kids on his own, so he left.
I got out extra large sized Band-Aids then and a super sized tube of antibiotic cream and figured that was enough. He was gone, I could heal.
Except I kept finding him in other men's clothing. There were smaller knives but they were still there. I still handed them over. I still stood by and let it happen. Sometimes they opened old wounds I thought were healed, sometimes they made new ones. Until the day I discovered my self worth. I lost the fear of being alone. I stood up to the woman in the glass and promised her no one would ever hurt her again.
That was when I got out the needle and thread, and sewed the wounds shut, meticulously, tediously, one by one. I know every stitch personally because each one represents a milestone in my healing.
Last summer I took the last stitch out of the last wound. The thing is, those areas are still sensitive. If anyone has ever had stitches they know what I mean. You can run into what has healed and it still hurts, even though the cut is no longer open.
Naturally the areas of the deepest wounds take the smallest amount of pressure to hurt me. But when any of those areas get pressed against, I recoil. I know how those wounds got there. I know I never asked to be abused but that I also allowed it to happen. You cannot be abused without your permission.
Knowing this, I'm hypersensitive to those things that make me feel I could be standing in line to have someone stamp "welcome" on my forehead and walk all over me again.
I can look at the bandaged place. I've faced the ugliness not just of the relationships, but of myself and how little I had to have thought of me to allow the kind of treatment I got. But I got so good at looking at that place I now find it hard to tear my eyes away and accept what's in front of me.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)
This sweet and wonderful man walked into my life 9 months ago wanting nothing in return except what I was so willing to give. He accepts me. He defines, in my life, right now, what Paul wrote above about love.
But I'm SO afraid sometimes to let it all go. To believe I deserve someone who treats me like this, no agenda, no personal gain, nothing but best intentions.
Of course he admits that he does get something from this arrangement too. I'm not a selfish and self serving wench bag looking for what I can get from a nice guy. He gets treated pretty darned good if I do say so myself. 
But I have to stop looking at the bandaged place. I have to know I'm healed and I don't need to keep looking at the scars of relationships past to know this. There is nothing to compare David against. He's unique and blows everyone else out of the water. He's in a class by himself. So why keep looking at the remnants of what other men have left me with?
Today, along with all the other revelations of things I need to change in my life that's come to me since I got those test results, I will also change this. No more recoiling when those scars get touched. It's inevitable, there are so many of them in so many places it's hard to not touch them. But they're scars, just scars, reminders, not definitions. I don't need to worry about them being reopened, not just because I know to not hand the knives over anymore, but because David wouldn't do that to me.
"The future is today." William Osler | |
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