Damaged Goods

I'm blatantly stealing this title, and most people reading this will know where I got it, too (not that it's much of a surprise).  To be fair though, it's entirely relevant.  I have a lot on my mind right now about people.  People and the damage they've taken, more specifically.

I know a lot of people who have been through their own personal hell.  Some once, others again and again.  And of course, every personal hell is different, so I'm not even going to try to put an objective threshold on this and am just going to say that it's a personal definition.  Moving past the technicalities...

The big thing is that we all got past it.  Or will get past it.  We've all been beaten and bruised, and some of us have been broken.  And while that does explain at least in part why we are who we are today, if perhaps indirectly, it doesn't define us.  We all manged to move on, and we continue being able to do so every single time.  No matter how damaged we get, we can still pull ourselves together and move forward.  It's such a common sentiment, but still so true.

Let me put this into perspective, at least a little bit.  About a year ago now, my life took quite an unexpected turn.  One that I quite possibly should have seen coming, but didn't.  The next four months involved bouncing from one hell to another.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say.  It was a particularly rough time.  And there were days when waking up was the hardest thing in the world, when I honestly hoped that maybe I wouldn't wake up tomorrow.

Well, I did.  I woke up the next day.  And the day after that.  And the one after that one, too.  And it got better.  Different portions of those months damaged different parts of me to varying extents.  But most of them are fixed now.  Sure, I still carry scars from a few years back.  I have experiences from even further back that have changed me and still seem intertwined with my subconscious in unpleasant ways.  But none of it hurts so severely anymore.  Everything got better.

Damage is almost never irreparable.  We can't undo what's been done, but we can heal it.  If I learned anything from the place I spent the last few years of my life at, it was this.  We are fixable beings, flexible creatures.  I learned that we can be okay in the future, even if we're not right now.  And I like that.

This has been an overly emotional and not at all rational post.  My sleep-deprived brain apologizes to the best of its ability.  Good night.