Scabs

Healing is a funny thing. When a wound is healing the number one thing any doctor will tell you is to leave it alone. Don't agitate the injury, don't expose it to unnecessary bacteria, don't put strain on it, leave it alone and let the body heal. When a person experiences trauma, this is the advice they all receive, and it's some of the hardest advice to follow.

As I try to move on from my mistakes in the past the hardest of all the lessons I've had to learn is to just leave the wounds alone. Leave the people who have hurt me be. Ignore the tiny pangs and occasional messages from them. Eventually it will pass and you'll be better off. The problem is sometimes our injuries, the people that haunt us from our past, have a way of grabbing your attention and making it really hard to ignore. These people antagonize, they ask seemingly harmless information. They are a million itchy scabs begging you to just lift up the tiny end and peek underneath.

I have been ignoring one of these people, and this is not a person who is easy to ignore. She is just about the squeakiest wheel there is. But I'm in a tough place because my only two options are to ignore or tell her to eat shit (okay, admittedly there are other things I could say but that is what is most likely to come out).

My mother used to tell me that in life you will be given certain tests, that each person has lessons to learn. And every time you fail that test life will simply throw another similar situation at you until you get it right. I seem to have a weakness for the scabs of my past. I always forgive them, let them back in, and let them cause trouble for me again. It's like quitting smoking. Every time you put out a cigarette you quit smoking. So for the people who go years versus the people who go days, a smoker is a smoker. Can you every really quit the bad habits?

Yes I can ignore this person and not say the things I want to say. There are people all over that I want to confront. I want to blame people. I want to pick fights. I want to make them feel bad about how they acted. But none of it will change the way I feel. None of it will change what happened or the mess I'm in. In fact, it'll just make it take longer to get out of the mess.

I want very badly to heal but I see it in my inbox, my cell phone, on Facebook, everywhere. I see the building I used to live in. I watch the show we used to watch. The wound is begging me in every way to prod it in some way. It will do anything to get my attention. And the more I ignore the worse it gets.

Believe me, I wish they made pain killers for this kind of thing. I could go for a social Vicodin right about now, just to take the edge off of dealing with people.