Secondary Intention

slow healing from the inside

Photo credit: Erin O’Brien (author)

Few things are simpler, and yet more complicated, than love. We all want it. We all need it. Sooner or later, most of us find ourselves feeling that we’ve failed at it. For those of us whose relationships with love are most troubled, the more we’re denied love, the harder we tend to chase it, but the more intensely we feel it, the less we tend to trust it.

Love is a giant mirror of our inner selves. No matter how much we try to control how we present ourselves to the world, the way we approach love exposes us – insecurities, unresolved issues, vulnerabilities fully on display for anyone who is attuned enough to interpret them.

I grew up longing for love, the kind of all-consuming, uninhibited, infinite love that seemed to exist only in fairy tales and fantasies. I dreamed of it constantly. There was a time during my teens when I realized I could mentally transport myself to a place where I was able to imagine that kind of love with such clarity that it was like a physical presence. I could spend hours lost in my thoughts, just existing in the space where the emotional experience I dreamed about was brought to life. I created storylines and soundtracks, listening over and over again to songs that triggered that intoxicating feeling of being completely captivated by love.

My reality stood in stark contrast to the love of my fantasies. I agonized over the possibility that I might end up alone, and I quickly tethered myself to anyone who came into my orbit. There was always an initial phase when everything was simple and lovely, even dreamily romantic, but eventually the specter of unmet expectations and fragile egos overshadowed whatever we had once found attractive in each other.

Mirroring the explosive conflicts that were a fixture of my childhood, I had some spectacular fights with romantic partners. There were many moments when I felt ensnared in the razor wire of unregulated emotion, yelling, crying, straining to free myself as a thousand tiny blades of angry words cut deeper and deeper into the flesh of my soul. At the height of the turmoil I would step outside myself and calmly view the scene from a distance. I would think, what am I doing? How do I keep ending up here? Why can’t I make this stop?

In the end, it was simple. I was desperately seeking something I didn’t believe I deserved to have. No one outside of me could have resolved that paradox. A few people tried. I’m sure I hurt them deeply before they wisely chose to abandon the cause. More often, though, I attracted partners – and occasionally even friends – with compatible dysfunctions. Together we would act out our individual emotional pathologies, using each other to reinforce our own negative beliefs about ourselves.

What I had in those relationships was never really love. It was a disoriented and transactional attempt to self-soothe, to paper over deep lacerations, to pursue validation and reassurance. No matter how well a relationship began, I eventually found myself locked with my partner in an endless codependent struggle, chasing security, searching for proof of loyalty, demanding evidence of devotion, rarely giving each other anything except as a way to secure the receipt of something in return.

I broke this cycle by choosing to turn my attention inward, abandoning the belief that my worth could only be measured by whether others chose to stay with me. I realized that I had no idea who I was. I had spent a lifetime remaking myself in other people’s images, refashioning myself according to others’ expectations – or at least, according to what I perceived their expectations to be. I peeled back all of those layers and discarded the many facades I had constructed in my attempts to escape the pain and shame of rejection. I studied my own reflection, honestly and unflinchingly but with compassion and forgiveness. And then I started to rebuild myself.

When real love arrived, I was able to recognize it and ready to receive it. It was uncomplicated, pure and unfiltered and enduringly intense. It required no struggle, no sacrifice of any part of my being. All it asked of me was that I give myself to it completely, without fear or hesitation or compromise. The love I experience now is complete and eternal. I trust it absolutely.

Exactly one week after the birth of my first child – an emergency c-section that was accomplished via an eight-inch vertical slice down the center of my abdomen – my incision suddenly reopened all the way down to my pelvic wall. I was quickly transported back to the hospital in an ambulance and readmitted through the emergency room. I was in agony, staring at the white fluorescent-lit ceiling, afraid to move or even breathe deeply and risk opening my belly further, waiting for the doctor to arrive and piece me back together again. When she finally appeared in my field of vision, she quickly assessed my condition and cheerfully suggested that if this ever happened again, I should grab a towel to catch my intestines in case they tumbled out.

Unamused, I asked her when she would be restitching my incision. “I won’t,” she said bluntly. She explained that now that it had opened in an unsterile environment, closing it again would only risk trapping bacteria inside. I would have to live with the open wound, enduring the pain of cleaning it twice daily as it slowly re-sealed itself from the bottom up. She packed the gash with saline-soaked gauze and left as I was wheeled into a room, where I spent one night before being sent home to recover on my own.

My initial reaction was horror - and intense apprehension. I didn’t believe the wound would actually heal. I had been cut open numerous times, but I had only experienced waking up with stitches. I had never seen what was under the surface. It seemed impossible that such a gaping incision could close itself without direct external intervention, but a week later, I could no longer see the heavy purple inner stitches that had prevented my belly from opening all the way. I adjusted to the discomfort of having the gauze removed and replaced. I got used to pausing twice a day for wound care in between attending to my infant son.

The process quickly became so routine I hardly noticed it. One day when my son was about six weeks old, I woke up and realized I’d forgotten to clean the incision the previous day. For more than a week the opening had been small enough that all I had to do was rinse it and cover it with a fresh bandage. But this time, when I peeled off the bandage, there was nothing left but a small scab and scar tissue. The scar was wider, more noticeable, more uneven than the neat one I’d had there from previous surgeries, but I was whole again.

I used to believe that I required someone else to provide emotional sutures and psychological bandages in order for me to achieve reconciliation and closure. I couldn’t conceive of the idea that I was capable of resolving traumas on my own. I didn’t believe it was possible to live without the constant threat of a reopened wound. Now I understand that the only way to permanently rehabilitate my emotional damage was to heal myself, gradually from within. A bit scarred, but free from infection.

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