Old Wounds

There’s nothing quite like getting old.  It seems the more you age, the more you hurt.  But I always looked at a bit differently.  It seems the longer you live the more wounds you collect.  And nothing hurts worse than old wounds.

Yes, I’m talking about physical and emotional.  On the physical side, I have the one that scares me the most.  A few years ago, I feel off some rocks on the California coast.  I hit my head pretty hard, bled quite a bit, but it stopped quick enough.  That injury has caused me to have acute motion sickness now.  I never had it before...but now, I go up in a plane with Lisa, and if I haven’t taken something, then yeah...I know it pretty quickly....



But, back to the one that scares me the most, is that I kinda broke my right arm, and caused pretty bad muscle damage.  I’d say that 80% of the larger bicep muscle was completely severed.  It took a few weeks for it to grow back.  Deep inside, I could feel the torn bits of muscle that slowly faded away.

This wound worries me to this day...along with the rotator cup damage that acts up every now and then that reminds me what I did.  I will forever wonder if the muscle healed back correctly, or if one day, when I’m lifting something, if the damaged muscle will tear again.

My physical wounds always serve as a reminder of my past mistakes and mishaps.  Like the reason I went to California in the first place.  When I look back now, I honestly can’t believe I was so stupid.  The whole trip was fraught with ignorance, and so many red flags and lies.

Lisa always tells me how, when she broke up with someone, they’d never have another chance.  In the end, I wish I’d have lived that way for those moments I was feeling weak.  I can point to many of my mistakes and understand the cause and effect of most every one.  But that trip to California was one of the largest mistakes I ever made in my life.

In the end, I enjoy being able to look back at my past with a better understand.  I can see how frustrated I was with love, with myself, and with my lonely prison.  I can see everything that led up to me completely giving up on love, giving up on hope.  I resigned myself to simply live my life as best I could and never expect to find love.


And then Lisa saved me.  She was there right when I needed her the most.  She never seems to understand my past, and how desperate I was for a true love that I had come to understand I would never find.  She doesn’t understand that I’m not perfect, and that I have failed many times, in many different ways throughout my life.  She doesn’t understand that I had to, to become strong enough to appreciate her the way I do.

There is no appreciation of Heaven like the appreciation of those who have gone through Hell.  I look back at those times as if it were my childhood, things I experienced, that caused me to grow up and become the man I am today....

Which brings me to the first wound.  Crystal told me that she loved me for the man she knew I could be, not for the man I was.  It was a dark night in my life the night she told me that.  Those words...that woman...set me on a journey to be the person I -=could=- be.  I did it for myself, not for anyone else.  I changed my entire life, pushed comfort directly out of my life, and started the quest to find myself.  And I never saw or spoke to her ever again.

Today, as I lay in the hammock, holding my wife close, you can be sure that I feel the pain of old wounds.  My arms aches almost constantly, and my knees have all sorts of issues.  But my heart...my heart and soul are strong.  My smile is real, and my life is happier than I ever dreamed it would be.  Lisa will never understand how much I appreciate her, how much I love her.  There are no adjectives that describe her, and what she means to me.  If she could see my past with her own eyes, all the pain, all the suffering, all the loss, she’d understand why I’ve appreciated every triumph in my life, and the triumph of her marrying me all the more.

The ocean has washed away the blood I left on the west coast, and the winds have worn away my footprints on the east coast.  My old wounds still hurt, but my soul has found the peace and happiness it deserves, finally...after all these years.  I am happy.