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A person is beaten, harrassed and prevented from enjoying life, from being productive. Another person is not beaten, but is harrased to the point of critical emotional injury. The person is a child, the injuries go deeper. The person is an adult, the injuries go deep enough. Maybe it makes little difference. Both are injured. Both have emotional injuries that cause social hiccups in life, glitches that are errors preventing happiness. Frustration results. If the person has children, the children get to experience the frustration. It will probably be similar to what caused the injuries that are now causing frustrating social problems. The person's children are being injured by the most important person in their life, the one they Love the most deeply. A kind word is rarely spoken sober, or only when the speaker is drunk or high... or both. The injured person may be overwhelmed, not being used to kindness. The person may have grown up reasonable healthy, no real emotional problems, doing ok socially and emotionally, those all important characteristics. Injured as an adult though. Now the person is a different person. The old skills are still there, but a new, darker emotional characteristic changes the thoughts and behavior, and possibly the talents of the person. An old talent is diminished, an old ability to feel, to empathize is diminished. But there is a different emotional way of being. The person has a raw open wound. And there is room for a new ability, a talent that was not there before, that was not even in the dreams of the persons mind. Or maybe, the talent to empathize has expanded to include a group of people who need it more than ever, people who are also injured, to whom a kind, truly understanding friend would make a world of difference. Or the person was injured starting from childhood, unable to even begin to cope with the overwhelming assault of emotional baggage from the parent. Some children manage to heal as they grow up, and their coping skills develop. But coping skills are not living skills. So it becomes a life of a person skillfully coping, and building a philosophy from that perspective on life. It is the rare person who truly heals, and learns to live. Others never learn to cope very well, the talent was never in them very strong. For them, help to heal is neccesary. They cannot heal without help. The sea of emotions from the injuries could be like being lost at sea in a fog. A kind, empathic friend comes along, and knows the way home, to firm ground where the injured can stand. Such friends are so few in this world, and the injured so many. The injured person can't ask for help. Who to ask? The pain of denial is the pain of being discarded, abandoned, neglected. It is overwhelming. It is slightly less painful to be in chronic pain for a life time. So, cannot ask. The risk is too high. The probability of rejection, too likely. Eventually, the person may realize, most people are injured. It is a world of injured people, wandering, trying to find someone to help them heal, like a hospital full of patients looking for doctors to heal them, only all the doctors are injured too. The injured must heal each other. -- Daemon Bernstein |