“Emotional: Scabs, Healing and Scars”

 

9 September 2004

Updated: 24 March 2010

 

 

 

 

Honestly, I do not remember talking about scabs with you but must have been good for you to take on as your own.  I do that a lot. No problem for me to borrow from the best I see, hear, etc. 

 

Seems to me, have had scabs from being hurt and also from hurting other people. Seems like the only people that have ever really hurt me to the point of emotionally bleeding are those closest to me, which, I guess, is always the case. In my case, I have a problem with forgiveness in that it takes a long time for me to forgive the person that hurt me and thus think I pick at the scab on purpose to keep it open. Stupid I know. But eventually, I forgive and stop picking at the scab and it heals, but as you say, always leaves a scar and once hurt by someone, even though you forgive them and the bleeding stops, scab appears and "heals", always left with the scar and never the same with that person.

 

But for me, worst is the scabs, which form when I know I have hurt someone else. I feel awful and will not the scab heal. I pick at it and pick at it to punish myself and make myself remember how awful I was. If I have a problem with forgiving others quickly, so too with myself. Just seems like I should suffer for what I have done and so I pick and pick and continue to bleed.  Don't even like a scab to ever heal up but eventually it does even though I never leave it alone, just gets to be a smaller and smaller scab and eventually, the scar does form but it larger and deeper than scars from the hurts caused by other people.

 

"Emotional: Scabs, Healing and Scars."  Not sure what my therapist would say about such a "model".  Maybe he would go along with it and maybe not. Have always questioned and still question if talking about the hurt and scab actually helps in the healing?  I just not sure.

 

I wonder if there are hurts so deep that although a scab may form over, the hurt just festers and festers forever like there is some bacteria or a splinter in there.

 

Twice in last 2 years, have gotten something in one of my fingers (last time it was a sliver of metal from drilling some holes in metal) and it festered and just was not going to heal right until I used an Exacto knife and cut into it and cleaned it out.  Never actually saw the sliver of metal but must have gotten it as scab did form and infection went away and now scar there to remind me to be careful around metal. Which makes me think of your Grandfather and how much he worked with metal all the time and wonder if he got slivers of metal in his hands and had to take them out himself. Cannot imagine he did not.

 

Years ago did some consulting work and work product had to be delivered over to Maryland at midnight and so in car, around beltway and turn on radio and there is this Indian, from India, Holy man guy and he is saying that the problem with life is we are always disappointed and thus unhappy and the only real solution is to not expect anything. No expectations. Do not want to be hurt in love, don't try to love someone. Don't want to fail in a career or business venture and suffer or feel miserable, don't try to excel in business or your career. Well, I did understand what he was saying but the idea of moving to some mountain top and having no contact with anyone and not doing anything just made no sense to me then or now. However, I was struck with the concept that unhappiness might be linked to expectations. 

 

And I think some of the hurts I have felt over the years from others were not really hurts they caused but I caused, expecting something from them they could not or would not give or were capable of giving. Chicken and the egg problem again?  Expectations were not met and I then hurt or was I truly hurt first and then realized how my expectations were not met?

 

In recent years, I have done better at not have expectations. Like the Bob Dylan song goes, "I locked up tight, I am out of range, I used to care, but things have changed."

 

I guess each wound, scab, healing and scar could have there very own chapter in some book or verses of a song or gymnastics routine or brush strokes on a canvas or pieces in a collage.

 

Scars. I have not considered them in sometime and the impact they might have on my current interaction with others.  Thinking now, I am sure they do. Know scars from my childhood and my parents at war or so it seemed to me, all the time, made me shy away from confrontation for a long time but I much better now. Yet, if I explored it deeply, I would bet that I could find all sorts of scars which effect my current behavior greatly.

 

Too bad too, as what is in the past is in the past or so it seems to me. Living in the moment is the key, I am told, and really believe, even if I do not accomplish it very often. 

 

Most times, not sure what I am supposed to be doing. Maybe nothing really other than experiencing and enjoying and being thankful.

 

Healing. Wonder what salve works the best? Usually I just heal on my own rather than get some "salve" from a friend but men tend to be like that, I think, for some reason. 

 

I don't know.