Broken Arm and Broken Soul

Sticks and stones may break my bones,

But names will never hurt me.

 

~Unknown

 

Slice your finger on the edge of a piece of paper.  A sharp pain courses through, but passes quickly.  Perhaps, if it is deep enough, there may even be some blood.  No matter.  It will heal.

 

Fall out of a tree, land the wrong way, and break your arm.  You are rushed to the hospital, where the skilled doctors, who have seen this before, several hundred times, will patch you up nicely.  Even if it’s a bad break, then the cast will go on properly, and in time, that too will heal, and you will regain most of your arm’s mobility.

 

But now, stand on the tracks, and get run down by a train.  Even if you somehow survive, your left leg is completely destroyed, and must be amputated, as must your right foot, not that either of those matter, because your spine has been broken, leaving you a paraplegic.  Meanwhile, you have internal bleeding, which the doctors are able to stop, but not before serious brain damage has occurred.  In time, the wounds heal, and your life goes on, but you have been forever changed; permanently damaged.

 

Physical injuries have different levels of severity.  So too with levels of mental, emotional, and even spiritual distress.  People never seem to realize this.  Now, consider this:

 

You have a bad day at work.  You come home, wiped.  Your boss was thoroughly unreasonable in his demands, three of your crew called in sick, leaving the workload far too high for those who remained, you didn’t sleep as well as you normally would have the previous night.  OK.  You go home, watch some TV, drink some relaxing herbal tea, pack your lunch for the next day, set your alarm, go to bed early, and when you wake up the next morning, you feel better, the automatic coffee percolater sends wafts of rich coffee aroma into your room, you slept very well, and you feel better.  Your mental injury has healed.

 

Your grandfather passed away.  You were fairly close to him. Saddened greatly by the news, you go through a grieving process.  At the funeral, many tears are shed, hugs are given and received.  The service is conducted, and your loved one is borne away, and his body committed to the ground.  The experience is painful for you, but at the same time, you can feel your wound healing throughout the process, and once it is completed, you feel a sense of closure.  In time, you will recover completely.  Your emotional wound does heal.

 

*WARNING: the next paragraph describes a hypothetical scenario that may be disturbing*

 

One day, while you are enjoying a dinner with your family, a cult of demon-worshipping fanatics suddenly attack.  In a matter of moments, you and your family are rendered unconscious and taken away to a hidden place.  There, you are forced to watch as your children are repeatedly raped and tortured, finally being horribly slaughtered before your eyes.  Your wife is then similarly tortured, and burned alive, all while you are forced to watch.  You yourself are bound, and over the course of the next several weeks, you are beaten, and put through physical and psychological turmoil to the very point of death.  Only then are you found and rescued; the cult is arrested, and you are set free.  But you have been forever changed.  You are not yourself anymore.  How do your mental wounds heal?  You may spend years in psychological therapy, and still never recover.  Even if you do… your experience will likely haunt you for the rest of your life.  You are damaged forever; scarred for life.

 

I know someone who was put through unimaginable torture.  Despite the fact that this happened a very long time ago, the damage is permanent.  Psychological instability due to the events of the past have caused chronic mistrust of any living human.  Now this person has been in psychological therapy for the last 13 years, and will likely be in this psychological therapy until the therapist who took on the case is no longer able to provide his services, due to advancing age, or death.  When that constant support is removed, then I cannot predict how it will affect this person’s ability to cope.  There are those that would tell this person that it is in the past, and that it must be let go.  There are those that would say, "Yes, it was horrible.  But get over it.  It was so long ago."

 

They don’t understand.  They cannot understand.  But for those of you who read my blog, I would tell you that to say such a thing to such a person is the equivalent to saying to our hypothetical train crash victim, "Just heal.  Rise out of the wheelchair, and go get a job."  Not only is such a demand unreasonable, it is very rude to the point of outrageous, and demonstrates a serious lack of empathy and compassion.

 

My point then, is not a rebuke, but it is a suggestion:

 

Do not discount the seriousness of emotional, mental, and spiritual pain.  The common expression that I opened this blog with is absolute, bigoted nonsense.

 

~The Mage~