Forgotten Drafts CH1- ‘Open Wounds’.

I was clearing out my drafts and I found a passage from one of the many works that I gave up on, a very long time ago. It feels like such a waste of some surprisingly good writing. So, I’ve decided to share some of them over here. The series will be titled ‘Forgotten Drafts’ and I’m glad I get to share it with you.

This particular one is kind of morbid and I have no idea when I came up with it. I guess it’s one of those late-night rambles that led to nothing. I’ve decided to call it ‘Open Wounds’ because, well, you’ll see.

TRIGGER WARNING: FOLLOWING PASSAGE HAS MENTIONS OF BLOOD. DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF IT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE!

“Do you ever trick yourself into thinking that the pain probably doesn’t exist anymore because you’ve spent such a long time trying to ignore its existence? On the surface, this wound may look like it healed well. Maybe there are no traces of the wound and all the pain is just internal. Yet, the minute you try to move on without fully healing, this wound rips open and all the pain that you had previously forgotten about hits you like a tidal wave. It’s like when the blood has congealed over a wound and you think that you’re probably good to go. Doesn’t seem like such a good idea when the wound re-opens and the blood comes gushing out, now, does it?

That’s the thing about letting yourself heal. It takes time. It’s painful as Hell. The wound keeps itching so badly, you have to hold yourself back from picking at the scabs. But let’s be honest here, we’ve all picked at our scabs and made things worse. At least once in our lifetime. It’s even funnier when you think about how we don’t learn in spite of re-opening our wounds multiple times.

That’s what trying to move on feels like when you’re still trying to heal, only, a tiny bit worse. When you pick at your scabs, you might start bleeding again. But when you keep replaying memories over and over again, you don’t even get to see the damage you’re doing to yourself.

Healing is hard.

There’s no way to tell whether you’re going to take 10 hours, 10 days or 10 months to get through something. It’s the uncertainty of it all that scares us. We keep wondering if we’ll still be able to function if we never heal at all. And how do we check if we have healed? We either go back to those tainted feelings to see whether they still mean anything to us, or we actually give moving on a shot. It seems like no matter what we do, we end up opening those old wounds again.

The worst part about healing is that you never even know when you’re going to make it out of this. There’s no way to tell. Maybe this is why so many of us run away from the very idea of letting our guards down again. Maybe we’re all scared of how long it’s going to take for us to heal the next time we get hurt.

Then again, that is what life is. We get hurt, we heal, we try to move on, and then do it all over again until it seems easier.”

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Featured Image by Nick Fewings on Unsplash