Love After Trauma

"Skin thickens with time, revealing more of what is deep within. Time spreads the scales to where they are most needed, leaving behind vulnerabilities and blind spots. Your wrinkles sing of your depth and your softness. Truth is, the older we get, the more we need each other." - Sean Swaby

My wrinkles, while reminding people that I may look wiser, am stronger than most, and will fight until the very end, really just signify the fact that I am incredibly vulnerable. Michael, they mean that whether I want to admit it or not, I need you or someone like you. While no two wrinkles of mine are the same, instead of making me open up, they've closed me off. For my wrinkles signify that I've been dealt too much of life's difficult journey, and more often than not, my wrinkles hurt me. 

"Wrinkles, scars, and broken lines will stretch your life into something more than you would have been without them." - Sean Swaby

While I know that my wrinkles have given me a greater capacity to hold more and feel more of what life can offer, I guess I'm feeling stuck and lost. For when will I realize that my wrinkles actually make me beautiful? When will someone else think that my wrinkles are beautiful? I fear that sometimes that will never happen.

"Your vulnerabilities are not signs that you are broken and weak, but rather that you are strong and able but also in need of other people." - Sean Swaby

As you know, Michael, up until this point the only person that I've ever really needed is me. I guess that I've always been too scared to let the right people into my life. For if I do, what will happen if they leave me? I don't know if I would be able to survive that. So instead, I've built my life around the idea that it's far easier and much safer to avoid those people and the risks associated with letting them into my life. But, without knowing it, I stretched my skin too thin. And because of that, I wasn't able to hold onto much of anything. In fact, after 27 years of stretching my skin too thin, it finally broke. I broke. 

And while I can sit hear and claim that I've hit rock bottom before, I honestly think that I personally had to break myself. From dad to mom to countless lovers to you, everyone but me has angered me, has disappointed me, has hurt me. My true rock bottom didn't occur until I did those things to myself. And while I hate the fact that it had to happen, there really was no other way. I could say that I would eventually change but Michael, we all know that it wouldn't have happened. I needed to harm myself in order to turn my life around. 

So while I may hate my wrinkles, I hope that one day I will learn to love them. Just like I hope someday someone else will learn to love them too. 

No fears and limitless, MHF