Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me”. I can remember being a child and reciting this to myself when others would make fun of me. It got me through some rough times back then but wasn’t exactly accurate because words can and in fact many times do hurt.

And it’s not just words that can hurt. Often times words are absent in the hurting. Many times it is someone’s actions or non-actions that hurt the deepest. For example: someone who says one thing and does something completely different. This can hurt more than if that person just outright tells you honestly what their intentions are. The world is a dark and dangerous place and there are people out there who are on a path to hurt as many people as they can any way that they can. They are dark and deceitful and they want to take out on the world what has been done to them. They have no desire to heal from their wounds. They only want to inflict pain believing that because they have been hurt, they are absolved of any responsibility for hurting others. They believe that it is each of our own responsibility to keep ourselves from being hurt and they if hurt us, well it’s our own fault. They have no interest in healing and living a normal life.

Being deeply hurt emotionally and mentally can take a lot longer to heal than a broken bone. And once you do, things are never the same. Your brain chemistry changes after each deep emotional wound. But what about people who are “born hurt”; born with a different brain chemistry than most people; born broken?

Adam Lanza had Asperger’s Syndrome which in itself causes an inability to read visual queues. He also had an undiagnosed sensory disorder which caused him to not want anyone to touch him. He had an extremely difficult time being around people. He couldn’t walk down the busy hallway of his schools without being gripped by an overwhelming anxiety attack. One wonders what he would have been like as a full grown adult had he not taken a gun and shot twenty little children and six adults and then turned the gun on himself. Would he have ever been able to have a relationship with a woman?  And what would that relationship have looked liked? How would they have been able to communicate with each other when Adam could not read visual queues and could not stand to have any one be close to him? Perhaps they would have just had a phone relationship or an online relationship where reading visual queues isn’t necessary and being in close proximity isn’t an option. Of course, by normal standards, this would not be considered a real relationship, would it? He drew haunting and beautiful pictures. How would he share these with the woman he was in a relationship with? I guess he could have scanned them into his computer and sent them to her but he would have never been able to see her expressions or experience her emotions when looking at his art which being a musician myself, is very much a part of the expression; to see and feel the reactions of others when experiencing your expression, your art. It seems that in examining his situation, he would never have been able to have a normal relationship with anyone, let alone a close relationship with a woman. He was by all sense and purposes, broken. He was born broken.

Adam Lanza found non-verbal communication frightening and could not read people. This caused him to retreat within himself; into is own world. Ninety percent of our communication is non-verbal. This is ingrained in our DNA because before there were words, there was only this type of communication. It has evolved exponentially over time and for a large percentage of our population, communication in this way happens unconsciously. Mastering non-verbal communications can improve our negotiating skills, our social interactions and is imperative in our close relationships with someone we are interested in romantically. People who are able to read non-verbal queues can create empathy, detect lies within seconds, and know immediately when it’s time to close a deal. People who are creating a rouse avoid people who can read non-verbal queues like the plague. They don’t want to be in the same room with people who can read non-verbal queues for fear their deceptions will be revealed, particularly if they are on a path to hurt that person. They won’t be able to accomplish their goal if that person reads them and realizes they are deceiving them. They are dark, deceptive and broken.

There are in fact people in the world who make it a dark and dangerous place and there are so many out there who can “break” us but it is our world and along with the dark and dangerous comes the light and safety of those who love us, who truly care for us and hold our best interests in their hearts. You can not have one without the other; the yin and yang if you will; the rain and the sun; the storm and the calm. Balancing can be tricky. Mitigating the harm that one awful person can do to your emotional health can be an almost impossible task particularly when you are someone like me who wears their heart on their sleeve and shares entirely too much with people who would seek to harm but for no other reason than the fact that they can. Sometimes, healing from these wounds takes time, introspection, retreating from the world for a bit so as to not endure any further damage. You will know when you’re ready to go out into the world to fight another day. And when you do, your shield is just a little bit harder, a little bit stronger, and you trust a little less easily; which can only really be a good thing if you’re someone like me who trusts too easily to begin with.