The Wounded
Current mood: contemplative
The Wounded….what you ask do I mean by that? Tell me, how many walking wounded are out there? I'm not talking about battle wounds. Well, I guess maybe I am but not the kind you are thinking about I'm talking about those who've endured and survived the carnage of the relationship…What makes someone dedicate themselves to that one woman? Overlooking even the obvious faults and warning signs. What makes one forgive anything, no matter how hurtful? What makes someone endure blow after blow to someone's self esteem delivered by the one held so dear and close to the heart?...Love?...it would seem that love does in fact mean you never have to say you are sorry.
What makes someone do things so cruel and torturous to those told they are so dear? How do you watch as the one who loves you suffers at your hand? How do you treat with such, ambiguity the one who claims and has proven time and time again their undying devotion? How do you sleep at night knowing that the very one who loves you so, lays awake in agony wondering what they have done wrong to deserve this cruelty, this punishment.
"Better to have Loved and Lost, than to have never Loved at all." Are you sure of that? No greater pain is there than that of a broken heart. A heart offered so willingly and repeatedly only to be cast asunder by the object of that hearts affection. Pain no medicine can dull, no stitch can repair, pain unlike any other. How does a heart continue so battered and broken and who would want such a heart once so gravely wounded.
You pass by them day after day never seeing the pain, the suffering, the shame. Having been battered so grievously they wonder through a bombed out moonscape of darkened skies and distant fires of recent and not so recent defeats in countless and unnamed battles…Where are they going? Wondering aimlessly from engagement to engagement the outcome always the same…defeat at the hands of those they love. Mental and emotional scarecrows, soldiers of an army long past defeat yet unable or unwilling to capitulate. Tattered to the point of being almost unrecognizable as human, yet to see them they look like anyone else. It's the eyes that give them away. Truly windows to the soul, look deep enough into them and they will play for you in vivid detail all that has transpired. To see those eyes is to see age. To see a maturity only gained by those who know the horrors of the battles of the loved and lost.
So my friend, if you ever do find that one who will love you without the pain of battle. Hold her dear, and cherish the calm, for the alternative is gruesome and horrid. And once witnessed can never be forgotten.
