Emotional Scars

Perception is probably the most important sense people have.

If there is physical pain, or actual injury to the body then it is always a little bit disturbing, but it is the emotional injuries that tend not to heal. They become the ghosts that string along throughout a lifetime, coloring and re-coloring every experience.

Two people find themselves in the same situation and one comes away angry, or upset. The other comes away traumatized. All things being equal, the way they perceive this action makes all the difference. A slightly unsettling event for one person can be a tragedy for another. Even every day things can seem horrendously life changing for some people.

Accidents can be forgiven, but intentional cruelty is much harder to let go of. Likewise, learned responses to certain stimuli make a huge difference in the response.

I know people who seem to thrive on bad experiences and tragedies. It’s as if they need them in order to garner the attention they crave. One example is a person I know who constantly makes dark personal jokes about life. They are often rather horrifying, but come out of this person’s mouth as such dry dark humor that it takes a while for the truth of them to seep through. For example: “Some people hunt for eggs on Easter. I remember the year we had to hunt for Mommy.”

I know other people who never mention the tragedies in their lives, those are the ones I believe are still suffering. It is still too painful for them to make these experiences any more real than they already are.

Our earliest years have a great effect on our perceptions, our responses. I am hoping Lennon will be able to take things pretty much in stride, the good and the bad by being able to talk about them and bring them out into the open. That way they surface, bloom and perhaps fade away for ever, leaving no emotional scars.