Zippers

Yesterday I came across a quote, supposedly from Rose Kennedy: “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”

And this week I’m reading Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed. Strayed talks about the moment in which she realizes that losing her mother at a young age will never be ok. In spite of having a good life and being happy, she has lost her mother, the most essential figure in her life. “And yet the unadorned truth of what she said — it will never be okay — entirely unzipped me.”

Strayed’s writing is amazing. Honest and poetic, and flowing with grit and compassion and love. I love to read her writing. When I read her words I am often overwhelmed with emotion. Surprised to find sentences that feel like they were written only for me and my experiences and my feelings. How could she do that? And how much does a bibliophile long to find those sentences, the ones that are written just for me? It doesn’t happen for me as much as I’d wish. And as much as it aches sometimes to read her sentences, Strayed’s words often do that to me. The same thing happened when I read her memoir, Wild. 

Her words prompt feelings of old pain flowing over me, but in a sort of orderly way, as if old scars have been reopened. The opening isn’t as messy as it used to be. I can look at the pain, I can feel it, I can know it is there, but I can also close it again when it isn’t serving me, when it is standing in my way. I do not have to wallow in that pain. 

Yesterday, when I came across that Rose Kennedy quote in the same hour I read the Dear Sugar letter “The Black Arc of It,” in which Stayed is unzipped, those two pieces clicked together. My scars are there, but they aren’t hard tissue or soft. My scars are closed with the sturdy zippers I have built from my pain. They open sometimes, but the power is always within me to close then again. 

This is not denial. My zippers are always there for me to see. The dangly bit often jangles for my attention, clamoring to be opened. In a certain turn of weather, or a certain season, the scars ache underneath. Some words, some phrases, some actions, some memories, careless people, well-meaning people unzip the zippers, letting out some pain, some emotion, some tears. I can feel these feelings and know that I am alive and human and imperfect. I can accept that some things will never be ok. But those feelings, these scars do not have to stop me. I can grasp the little jangly bit that I have built with my own healing and my time and my understanding and I can close the zipper, closing the scar back over the part that will always be there, covering over the part that will never be ok. Closing the zipper to save my sanity. 

My scars are closed with the sturdy zippers I have built from my pain. They open sometimes, but the power is always within me to close then again.