The Healing of Wounds

Why do people get so mad so often? I've asked that a million times. When people are questioned about their lives, or their feelings, or many other aspects, oftentimes they will become defensive and angry. When something happens in their life that they don’t like, often they will get mad. Or when someone hurts them. Or when life throws a painful curve ball at them. People can get so mad at everything, or at nothing. It seems like there is really nothing there for them to be mad at. They should still be happy, or grateful; or at the most, sad, hurt, disappointed, etc...

But they become so mad, so defensive, so angry.

I’ve always wondered why, and maybe it’s different for everyone.

I have noticed a trend though. Whether it’s just coincidence or not, there is still definitely some truth to it.

When an animal gets hurt, and it is wounded and bleeding, it has two choices. Either it will run and hide so it can heal, or it will fight back. Usually it will pick the first choice, unless it no longer becomes an option. They will fight as much as they have to, until they can finally run and hide, or they will keep fighting until they even end up dying, possibly.

Humans can be much the same way. When we get hurt, we often strike back out, or run away and hide. Or sometimes, we do both.

Life does not allow us to hide forever, and these kinds of emotional injuries and wounds that we get don’t heal near as fast as any sort of physical wound that we could potentially sustain. There is no bandage to put over the hurt, and there is no possible way to stop the bleeding. You could shut down all your bodily functions, you could stop breathing, your mind could stop, your heart could stop, and inside you could still hurt worse than anything possibly imaginable.

Perhaps everyone will just have to go through it at some point. Perhaps it’s really not escapable for anyone.

Since we can’t hide forever, or even until the wound eventually heals, oftentimes we end up fighting instead. We can’t shut the world out completely, we’ve still got to live and continue on.

There are many things that people often end up fighting against when they’re hurting. They almost always end up fighting against themselves in some form or another. Potentially, they could also end up fighting against their friends, or the people around them. More often than not though, they will end up fighting against the person that hurt them. Whether or not that person really meant to hurt them, or was even trying to at all. They should have known better, shouldn’t they? That’s what we all think.

So we take out our anger on so many people. It’s wrong, we know. Sometimes though, it’s just part of the healing process. As with any sort of injury, it’s harder to heal on your own. It also takes a whole lot longer. Especially since you have no one to turn to when the slightest thing ends up ripping everything all open again. Who knows how long it could end up taking to heal? Sometimes it never ends up completely healing. Sometimes no one sees, sometimes no one knows, sometimes no one cares.

Nobody sets out to get hurt, but nobody escapes it either. The person that we might have cared so much about may have hurt us horribly, maybe on purpose, maybe not. We don’t really consciously want to go out and end up hurting them, usually. But sometimes we end up doing just that. Again and again. Without really realizing why sometimes.

If they could just run and hide, I’m sure they would. But life doesn’t really give us that option, and sometimes, we just end up fighting back instead. With the potential of destroying everything we hold dear.

We don’t really want to destroy it all. But our actions keep seeming to say otherwise.

We don’t really want to hurt them either. But sometimes we just seem to end up hating other people’s happiness, just because ours was hurt so badly right now. 

And sometimes it's just easier to hate someone than to be wishing they were still there with you.

Tara J. Howard



Copyright 2014