Healing and forgetting

Healing… I think we feel that healing is closely associated with forgetting. Or maybe we hope it’s that way. We all have lived through events in life we wish never happened.

• The embarrassment of forgetting the national anthem half way through playing it at a school assembly.
• The pain of breaking up with your first love.
• The devastation of a close friend’s betrayal.

We want to heal from those wounds. To move beyond them as if they somehow didn’t happen. To regard them as simply a moment in time we choose to never remember again. We don’t like reliving those moments because they hurt all over again. They remind us of failure… heartache… hurt.

So is it fair for us to expect to forget the pain and heartache of the past? Isn’t it better to remember it with less attachment? To grow beyond it’s initial impact? …to heal?

Healing does not mean forgetting. It simply means that our scars don’t hurt anymore.

Healing hurt like crazy

I have a rather large scar on my left arm. Big. Ugly. Eternal. It’s from an accident at work. Not my fault. Freak accident. Third degree burns. Hurt like crazy. (I am not sure how crazy hurts, but it hurt like that.) After the accident, I was intensely aware of my arm. It hurt all the time. I had to change the bandage several times each day. The pain changed how I worked, ate, slept, hugged my kids and interacted with other people. It was all encompassing. Over time, though, the wound healed over and became a scar (and not a very pretty one).

For a while I was very aware of my scar. I felt it was obvious to everyone around that something happened. I wanted to not talk about it so I covered it up by wearing longer sleeves. Eventually, I stopped being concerned about it. My scar simply became part of my life. Part of me. I forget about it. Sometimes I look at it and marvel at the pain I endured, yet lived through. My scar is a reminder of a tough time. I don’t want to forget that year of my life. I want to remember that I was tough enough to live through it.