The Blues

Scars

On June 30, 2010, in Barrow Pushing, Life, by Rosie

They say people come into your life for a reason. They also say, everything happens for a reason, and on more skeptical, cynical days, I wonder if this is just something we tell ourselves to bandage our pain and get the hell ‘on with it.’

There’s logic in life, but there’s also room for ‘things that cannot be explained.’

In an era where we can Google anything from ‘how to make apricot jam’ to ‘Rosie Jones’s; bum’ to ’10 Easy Steps to be a Prime Minister’, it’s nice to have a realm of knowledge that’s still inexplicable (or based purely on WTF?) …

Like when you meet someone and strike up an instant rapport as though you’ve known them forever. Like the instinct that hits you in the gut when things just don’t seem right. Like the supreme mysteries of death, of life everlasting, or ‘there is no death.’

Like the visceral toxicity of a broken heart when ‘that person who has come into your life for a reason’ might let you down.

When I was younger, I didn’t believe in a ‘broken heart’. The literal meaning of the word was impossible. I was a student of anatomy and physiology, had total faith in the durability of the cardiovascular system and knew that the heart was incombustible.

Life teaches us otherwise. With loss and grief, break-ups and break-downs, I’ve learnt that in the course of great sorrow, the chest compacts to a point where it really does feel like our heart is breaking. Some people describe it as being ‘broken.’ Others are ‘shattered’, ‘devastated’ or ‘unable to go on.’

It feels like a battle wound to me. As though a swordsman (or woman) has used his/her largest saber, sized up the left side of your spirit and sluiced a gash in it.

Whether we don that wound like a weeping, festering sore forever is a choice, I suppose. Or, whether we acknowledge the pain, mourn with it, grieve over it, remember it always, but solider on … is this the alternative. It’s always there, of course, and it can kill us by its intensity, but with time we might be able to wear it like a scar won the battle of living.

At the time of being sliced open, it’s the last thing on our minds. Sometimes it seems as though we’ll never recover, never feel ‘normal’ again – whatever the hell ‘normal’ actually means. (Isn’t that term open to interpretation!)

If people come into our lives for a reason, why the hell do they break our hearts? Why do relationships break-up and why do some people move on? Why are others left in their wakes, having to experience the shattered feelings and try to recover?

Very difficult questions to answer. Perhaps the person has entered our lives to teach us who might be right or wrong for us? Maybe they give us deep insight that we can only see as we age and put that break-up into perspective? Their reason might be to show us we are better off alone, we were never meant to be, that our particular soulmate is harder to find, and if you’re meant to discover him/her in this lifetime, you’ll do so eventually.

But it’s damned hard. It’s a difficult time, especially for someone filled with youth and vigour, love and lust and happily-ever-after notions. The wound is fresh and there’s no bandage big enough to stem the flow of loss. So we wait and support, reminding ourselves that (perhaps) everything happens for a reason and the people who are in our lives can provide a constant. Until the battering of our heart subsides.

Neil Finn – Because boys with guitars are always special, and no one does an upbeat sad song like the Finns.