The Walking Wounded

Slowly but surely, I’m coming to realize a simple truth about myself and my life: for longer than I’d care to admit, I’ve been walking through the world like an animal complete with a gaping, bleeding wound.

Some time ago, a person I thought was a medic found me and administered a balm to help the wound heal. But it didn’t heal, because this person wasn’t a medic. And what was administered wasn’t a balm to the wound. While the wound didn’t bleed actively anymore, it never scabbed over. It remained raw and painful sometimes.

I got used to it. I lived my life with varying degrees of pain; but, for the most part, I never considered that this wound wasn’t healing. I was told this wound was healing, and the ‘medic’ was a great savior, and wasn’t I lucky to have found this ‘medic’? I would be nowhere without them. I would have been eaten by a predator.

This ‘medic’ would also pick at the wound periodically. Sometimes, they would make this wound actively bleed, and cause more and more pain, while telling me their treatment would ultimately help me heal.

But I was never allowed to truly heal. And I lived in a constant fear of reopening the wound. Inevitably, I tried to do everything in my power to please this ‘medic’ in the hopes they wouldn’t keep picking at the wound. Nothing I did was good enough.

Eventually, this altruistic ‘medic’ decided I was better off with not only the original wound, but also a new, fresh, angry, profusely bleeding laceration. Even better, I was told this new wound was self-inflicted, even though it wasn’t.

In the time since this new wound formed, I have stayed in the dark corners of life. Either this wound is deep enough it will take a miracle to heal, or my body is depleted of white blood cells from years of the original open wound.

I’m now desperately avoiding any and all predators. Trouble is, I’m now also avoiding the ‘medics,’ both real and pretend, since I am not sure who I can trust anymore. How does one know a true medic from an impostor? Or is the true medic within us and not something we discover in another person?

One day when these wounds are mere memories and silvery skin, I can truly step into the light and rejoin the rest of the world. Until then, I’m content to slip through the shadows alone.