This article is part of a two-part series though each stands well enough on its own. If you’d like to read the first article, you can find it here.
The first significant injury I remember happened when I was eight years old.
My twin cousins were visiting from Arizona, and we were running around my grandparents’ backyard. They had a small treehouse built into the plum tree that leaned slightly toward the southern fence line. My cousins climbed up ahead of me. I scrambled up the ladder, eager not to miss out on whatever mischief they were about to get into, and caught my hand in the hinge side of the door just as my cousin wrenched it shut.
Specifically, my right index finger landed between the frame and the hinge. The door didn’t close all the way… because of the bone.
I screamed, which made my cousin let go of the handle. When I pulled my hand back, it didn’t bleed right away, but I thought I could see bone. My misshapen finger started swelling immediately. I don’t remember the car ride to the clinic; just holding a paper towel around my hand and feeling every heartbeat. Then sitting motionless in a vinyl chair, waiting.
They sent us to a different clinic. Then we waited again. Hours passed. My dad sat beside me. The initial shock had worn off, and the pain wasn’t as intense anymore. My grandpa was there too, pacing the length of the room just to stay moving.
The first doctor x-rayed my finger. It was cracked down the length, and both he and the second doctor figured surgery would be required.
A specialist was called in. When he finally arrived, well past midnight, he unwrapped my hand, removed what was left of the fingernail, and told us surgery wouldn’t be necessary.
I would heal.
Not that I wanted surgery, but it felt anticlimactic after all the waiting. I’d expected something more dramatic.
And I did heal.
But the real wound didn’t go away so easily. Not because it was serious. But because I didn’t want it to.
I blamed my cousin, even though it wasn’t really his fault. I decided I hated him. Not in passing. Not as a tantrum. I made it my mission. I remember lying in bed a few nights later, dreaming up ways to get even. It was the kind of misplaced fury only a child can carry with total conviction and zero self-awareness.
And I held onto it.
For four years.
That grudge lived in me through fifth and sixth grade. It wasn’t until I was nearly twelve that something softened. I don’t remember a specific turning point — just that the hatred didn’t feel so acute anymore. I’d stopped nursing the wound. And when I finally let it go, I realized how absurd it had all been.
A door closed. An accident. A hurt. Then four years of internal, elective scar tissue that had nothing to do with my cousin — and everything to do with the way I handled pain.
We all carry things longer than we should.
I wrote recently about another cousin. Another injury. Different story, same shape. That one involved a rock to the hand, not a door — but the real damage lived in me just as long. It took years to admit how much I let it shape me.
And I think about that now — how many hurts in adulthood follow the same pattern. Someone says something sharp. A mistake cuts deep. We bleed a little. And then we decide, almost imperceptibly, to let the bitterness stay.
Maybe it makes us feel in control. Maybe it helps us feel strong. But it rarely leads us anywhere good.
I’ve carried bigger wounds since then. Real ones. The kind that don’t go away in a month or a year. Emotional betrayals. Professional failures. Seasons of burnout so intense they left my confidence in ruins. Nights when I couldn’t sleep because the what-ifs and why-didn’ts rattled around too loudly to silence. And that’s when I wasn’t intentionally fanning the flames.
Those were the seasons I chose not to let the light in. Not because I liked the dark. But because the dark was familiar. And familiar pain is easy to cling to, sometimes easier than the uncomfortable work of healing.
That’s what I’m noticing now: how easy it is to stay wounded, even after the injury has technically passed. To replay conversations. Keep a scorecard. Rehearse what we wish we’d said. It becomes habit. And then the habit becomes a kind of home.
A sad one. But familiar.
I don’t want to live like that anymore.
There’s a line from a song that comes to mind when I think about all this. The lyric goes: “You don’t live there anymore.”
That phrase has stuck with me. It’s become a quiet check-in. When the rumination starts up, or I find myself picking at an old emotional scab, I ask myself, Do you still live there?
And most of the time, the answer is no.
If anything resonates with you, I wrote a book you might appreciate.
The moment I remembered the treehouse story, I laughed. Not because it didn’t hurt. It did. But because I could see it differently now. I could see myself clearly. Small and scared, doing the best I could to make sense of pain. And choosing what I thought was control when what I really needed was comfort. And forgiveness.
That’s what we do when we’re hurt and no one’s around to help us process it: we make up stories that feel safer than the truth.
I still do that sometimes. I still resist healing because healing requires change. And change requires honesty.
But I’m trying. Slowly. I’m trying to stop writing myself into the same chapter over and over again.
There’s still so much I don’t know.
But I do know this: the old pain doesn’t get to decide who I become next.
The door closed. I screamed. It hurt.
But I don’t live there anymore.
And that is enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment