Why Damaged?

Why would I name this blog damaged? It stems from conversations I have had with other damaged people. People who took exception to the damaged label. We can't change the circumstances in which we are born. We can only learn from those circumstances and grow. Everything we are subjected to as a baby, child, youth, young adult and onward shape who we become. It is impossible to not be affected by those things both good and bad.

Sometimes the lives we started with damage us. Sometimes we don't recognize it in ourselves. We can't see what others see in us or what is sometimes starring us in the face. We can't see how the damage that was done to us effects the person we become, the decisions we make and the life we lead. Sometimes we are unwilling to admit the power some influences had on us. Sometimes we just accept who we are and sometimes we find the strength to be better.

There is one other catalyst for this blog. One I find hard to think about, one I kept hidden my whole life but one so profound it became impossible for me to forget. My first journal. Maybe it didn't start as a journal so much as a wish book. Wish book isn't right either but I have no other word for it. It was the writings of a child, a damaged child, one who could not see anything beyond the tiny world in which she existed. It wasn't dated but I was about 5 or 6 when I started making stick figure entries and later simple writings and eventually detailed plans, there were no more entries after I was about 13 or so.

The first time I remember coming across the book after my early teen self was in my late twenties. I recall seeing it through the years prior to that but not opening it. Maybe I'd forgotten what it was, maybe it was timing, or maybe I feared the memories I had pushed away so far deep down I wanted them to stay down, to be forget. Why I didn't look at it back then and why I hadn't thrown it away in those brief glances I am not sure. Certainly I had seen it dozens of times between the time I quit writing and the time I finally opened it for a glance in my late twenties but I had never opened it before.

That first time I gave the book any attention I only thumbed through the pages then looked at the first page or two. I was so taken aback I couldn't bring myself to look further than a quick perusing of those first couple of pages. The memories came flooding in and crushed me. In a huge wave of fear and grief I nearly drown. Like an elephant on my chest I couldn't breathe. I shoved the book back the box it had been stored in tried to forget again.

I was in my mid thirties when I found the book again. For a moment I chose to forget those first few pages. I worked up the courage to look at every page and I read the whole book cover to cover. Then I put it down and cried for about a week before I could pick it up again. I read it over and over again. Memorizing the beginning stick figure pictures I had drawn and the passages I had scratched out. Then the more detailed pictures and plans. Finally I decided it would have been better if I had never seen it again. It was if I was obsessed with it's yellowed pages. I finally burned it. My obsession was quieted and I was able to let the images fade some.

More years have gone by and the images are still in my mind. They have faded but they won't ever leave. In this blog I'll write about what I wrote. I tell anyone who reads this about the little book I wrote and and the life I had chronicled. I'll write about conclusions I have drawn and the hope I have discovered in myself and others. But like every story first I'll have to begin at the beginning.