"You're Attracted To Damaged People, Aren't You?"

"You're attracted to damaged people, aren't you?"

I bristled when I first heard that question...actually kind of recoiled. It felt like an insult, like I had bad taste in people or something, like I'm doing something wrong.

It came from Eva, and when she saw my reaction, she hastened to tell me it wasn't an insult at all. Rather, she meant that I was attracted to depth (in which demons can hide); wisdom (often hard-won); and strength (which often comes from, and with, battle scars). And I thought yes, that's me in a nutshell.

"You're real and that's hard to find. There's no plastic in your world."

This statement, a day later from someone else, felt much more like a compliment, especially since it was coupled with "You could teach a lot of people how to feel. The problem with today's society is that we don't feel anymore, we're too busy to feel."

That was felt good to hear.  Like I'm doing something right. But oddly enough, it immediately brought Eva's question of damaged people and my attraction to them back to my mind.

I haven't found many people in my life who aren't damaged in some way. Some have had unhappy childhoods that led directly into unhappy adulthoods. Others have been driven to despair by the world and the people in it. Still others are missing life tools from the toolbox, for whatever reason. Affection is a big one. They never got it and so never felt it and so they feel they don't deserve it and in any case they don't have it to give to others. Courage is another one: the courage to stand up for what you believe in, especially when it's yourself. That your desires are valid, that you're maybe not entitled to be given them, but certainly to fight for them. Nowadays,  in the era of helicopter parenting, we as a society are starting to deal with most of a generation that has no intuitive grasp of failure, having never been allowed to fail. That's going to produce some mighty interesting therapeutic adventures down the road.

So yes, damage is common. It's sad, really, just how many of us (and I include myself) have been badly, unfairly and repeatedly hurt, by others...and often all by ourselves.

But what now?

Some people wallow in it. They can't help it: they're living life in the passive mode. They're not responsible for a single event in their lives....it all happens to them. I haven't got the time of day for these people. I did once; it cost me a great deal of my own emotional strength just to try and keep one of them afloat, and she was dragging me down with her. I still feel guilty for cutting her out of my life. I know I shouldn't, but I do.

Others--a great many others--struggle against it and try to rise above it. And those are the people I'm attracted to, because those people have depth, strength and wisdom...and almost always empathy for others sharing the noble struggle. Empathy draws me like a moth to a flame.

Most of all, these people are real.

I'm deeply attracted to the real, and just as put off by fakery in all its forms. Makeup bothers me, when I deign to notice it. Not so much the fact of it, as the perceived need of it. Some of the prettiest women I've ever known are terrified to show their real faces in public, and I want to find whatever planted that fear in them and put a stake through its heart.
I hate reality television, almost all of which is scripted; what little isn't is instead predicated on destroying the self-esteem of strangers for other strangers' amusement.  Destruction, to me, is also, in a sense, phoney: the only real force is creative.

I've learned to think this way because I am horribly affected by violence in any form, physical or emotional. Even against inanimate objects. Many people, mostly men, seem to harbour a great and forever unfulfilled desire to watch things be blown up. I have to restrain myself from thinking these people must be mentally defective...I can't even begin to understand the attraction that seems to be inherent in wanton destruction. My attractions are all creative: the growth of a forest, an outpouring of words or of music, a hug and a cuddle--if you don't think those last two are creative, you're not doing them right.
And so I view destruction as transformative--a necessary step in the process of creation. That reframe helps me over the sense of heart-hurt I feel instinctively when I watch or even hear about something (and especially someONE) damaged or destroyed.

There may indeed be real people who have managed to skate through life without incurring damage, and if so, they have my sincere congratulations. Most of the rest of us down here in the trenches are living a different story...a story full of knocks and sharp edges. And make no mistake about it, it's a struggle. The people who impress me most are the ones who are not afraid to admit they can't go it alone.

Nobody can, you know. Not without becoming much more damaged than they already are. We're a social species and we're hard-wired to seek out love from each other. Things were created to be used and people were created to be loved. The problem with today's society--or indeed, one of the many problems with today's society, is that things are loved and people are used.

It's not a matter of fixing the damage done. Often times you can't do that, at least not directly. It's reframing the hurt you've sustained into a positive thing. It's looking at a scar and seeing great beauty in it--not just character, but actual beauty. This is second nature to me now: I see beauty in (almost) everyone. Pretty much the only people I find ugly these days are the ones who lift themselves up by dragging others down in various ways: bullying, neglect, sanctimony: all these things turn me cold. I'm working on that--those people have their demons, too, and only need to learn a new way to fight them. But the rest? The folks who are equally willing to love and be loved, not despite their darker thoughts, but because of them? Those are my people; that is my tribe.

It's why this was and remains my love song to Eva...the most pure expression of love I have ever heard in my life, sung freely and often for the purest expression of love that is in my life. It's why I make every effort to love as many as I can as strongly as I can: because love creates like nothing else. In this world, that counts for a lot. In fact, it counts for everything.

Am I attracted to damaged people? You're damned right I am.