The Deepest Wounds Aren’t Made by Sharp Knives

The deepest wounds aren’t made by sharp knives. They are made by words, lies, absences, and falseness. They are wounds that can’t be seen on the skin, but that hurt, that bleed, because they are made of sad tears, the kind that is poured out in private and in silent bitterness…

Those who have been hurt just float for a while, stay adrift. Later, when time has sewn up a few of those wounds, the person realizes something. They notice that they have changed; they still feel vulnerable, and sometimes they make the worst mistake possible: creating an iron wall for self-defense. They build this up with nails of distrust, sometimes the hammer of rage, and even the barbed wire of resentment. Defense mechanisms used to avoid being hurt once again.

That being said, no one can live their whole life on defense. We cannot become permanent residents in the harbors of our solitude, expatriates of happiness. Managing suffering is a rough and conscientious job, which, as Jung would say, requires getting back in touch with our own shadow to recover our self-esteem.

Favoring this union again is something that no one can achieve by themselves. It is an act of delicate solitude that we will undertake almost as a rite of passage. Only those who manage to face the demon of their trauma with courage and decisiveness will manage to come out of that forest of poisonous thorns victorious. Although it is also true that the person who emerges from that hostile scenario will never be the same again.

They will be stronger.

The balm of a hurt mind

The balm of the injured soul is balance. It is being able to take steps towards acceptation to free everything that is weighing you down, that is hurting you. It is changing that torn, fragile skin for a harder one, a more beautiful one, that will clothe that tired heart so it doesn’t get cold. With that in mind, we must remember that there are many underground roots that continue feeding the root of your pain. Ramifications that, far from healing the wound, feed it.

Hating our vulnerability is, for example, one of those nutrients. There are those who deny it, who react to that apparent weakness. We live in a society that forbids us from being vulnerable.

However, a balm for the hurt mind is accepting your most fragile parts, knowing that you are hurt, but that you are also deserving of tranquility, happiness. The important thing is loving ourselves enough to accept those broken parts without hard feelings. Without turning into renegades of our own affection and that of others.

Another root that feeds our wounded mind is the woodworm of resentment. Whether we believe it or not, this emotion tends to “poison” our brain to the point of changing our patterns of thinking. Prolonged resentment changes our vision of life and people. No one can find any sort of balm inside this personal cage.

Those deep and invisible wounds will live in the deepest part of our being forever. However, we have two options. The first is to be prisoners to this pain until the bitter end. The second is to remove our armor to accept and feel our own vulnerability. Only in this way will strength, learning, and that liberating step towards the future show up.

We are all a little broken, but we are all brave

We all drag along our broken parts. Our pieces lost from those puzzles that we never managed to finish. A traumatic childhood, a painful relationship, the loss of a loved one… day by day, we go through from one to the other without noticing those invisible wounds. The personal battles that each one of us has gone through shape who we are today. Going through this with courage and dignity makes us nobler. Before our very eyes, it makes us much more beautiful beings.

We have to be capable of finding ourselves again. The broken corners within us completely push us away from that inner skeleton where our identity was maintained. Our value, our self-concept. We are like coarse souls that do not recognize one another in the mirror or that convince themselves that they no longer deserve to love or be loved again.

Keys for healing your wounds with courage

There is an expression in Japanese, “Arigato zaishö,” that literally translates as “thanks illusion.” However, over a very long time, it has developed another really interesting connotation within the field of personal growth. It shows us the subtle ability that humans have to transform suffering, hard feelings, and bitterness into a lesson.

Let’s open our eyes from the inside to take new hope. Because focusing on the torture that those wounds create completely pushes us away from the opportunity to acquire knowledge and perspicacity.

To achieve this, we must keep our feelings from turning turn into that hammer that, time and time again, wails away at the same nail. Little by little, the hole will grow larger.

Putting a stop to those recurring thoughts of anguish, hard feelings, or blame is without a doubt the first step. All the same, it is good to focus all of our attention on tomorrow as well.

When we find ourselves in that dark bedroom where our only company is bitterness and our hard feelings, our future perspectives burn out, they stop existing. We have to get used to the light, little by little. To the light of day, to finding new hope, new projects to undertake.

It is possible for us to be “buried” throughout our life by the veil of pain that is created by those invisible wounds. Nevertheless, remember, we are seeds. We are still capable of sprouting and growing in the most adverse situations to shout at the top of our lungs: “Arigato zaishö.”

Images courtesy of Miho Hirano