When I was about seven years old, I decided that I was going to change the world. I was going to make a difference. I was going to save people and ever since I could remember, I walked around with wide eyes and a naive smile, a clichéd dream tucked away safely in the back pocket of my jeans. It found a home there, stitched inextricably on the rough material not unlike a homemade patch of a quiet promise.
I saw my mom, who was a nurse, remedy bleeding scars and skinned knees with needles long enough to find the hurt and numb it. I saw her chase away the sting of words and rivers of hurt with band-aid kisses and hugs akin to life vests. Because of this, I thought broken hearts were easy to heal. I believed soft words and bandages wrapped on wrists were a good enough solution to make the pain go — it was, for a while, anyway.
But growing up, I’ve learned that scars didn’t necessarily mean healing, homemade soup wasn’t a remedy for heartache, and band-aids didn’t really stop the bleeding from inside. Growing up, I’ve learned that there is more than one way to hurt someone — scars could come from stones and bullets and reckless decisions on Saturday nights or they could come in the shape of people. But I’ve also learned that hurt could be self-inflicted (and, more often than not, this was the case). Scars can be a mirage of mirrors and the thing about mirrors is that they only ever reflect what your mind has told your eyes to see.
I read once that we all have a little of “I want to save the world” in us, that it’s OK if we only save one person, and it’s OK if that person is ourselves. Ever since I could remember, I wanted a white coat to help me remedy tangled limbs and broken bones. I wanted to help turn arms into embraces and promises of a chance to be better. I wanted to make a difference — a clichéd dream tucked away in the pocket of my jeans years down the road I still find myself reaching into.
It’s still there, I haven’t lost it but maybe it’s not about white coats and promises of saving lives through medicine. Artificial wounds are easy to heal but people have scars embedded deep enough into veins and tissues not even messily written prescription pills can numb them.
Perhaps, it’s not even about healing at all.
Maybe it’s about finding the strength to rip those wounds deep enough to the core of all the pain and finding all the courage to accept that as long as we learn to save ourselves, that’s enough to make a difference in the world.
“The worst wounds, the deadliest of them, aren't the ones people see on the outside. They're the ones that make us bleed internally.” - Sherrilyn Kenyon
