The Iron Maiden of Healing:

Reopening Wounds, Hurting Those Who Help, and Why I Can't Weep

Sometimes I think I crash often because I can never allow myself to crash hard enough. Or maybe it would be more appropriate to say I can’t crash deep enough to ever actually hit the ground, so I keep nose diving and pulling up. Hopefully I can explain, but I’ll need you to walk through some dots with me.

It has taken a lot of work, and an outpouring of support and love from close relationships, to begin allowing myself to be vulnerable with people; to “open up” and “be me”. I use quotation marks not in mockery or disregard of those phrases, but in recognition that it is still a conscious action rather than my default state, and only a partial lifting of the mask. A lot of that work involves deconstructing, and that will be a lifelong journey. I receive recognition for being human—in safe spaces, in brave spaces, and in spaces where conflict is expected. For allowing myself to feel and to communicate those feelings to other human beings without fear of them being used against me. For doing so in a way that minimizes harm, and for accepting feedback when given and accountability when due. And this, admittedly, has been a kind of ‘physical therapy’ for my spirit, my sense of being, for my soul if that’s how it resonates with you. I am not beaten in my community spaces, I am reforged. But the embracing comfort of community is often experienced in a sort of twisted conjunction with piercing & burning anguish, something akin to finding warmth while freezing by leaning onto a hot Iron Maiden. Perhaps more aptly put, deconstructing with a supporting community is like having been trapped in one that was somehow locked from the inside, then cast into the arctic, and just as you’re on the brink of hypothermia, someone outside starts heating up the casing & spikes to warm you while others are trying to walk you through picking the lock.

You can still choose to freeze to death by holding fast, stiffened muscles winning against the cramps, ignoring the voices until you fade out. Or you can push against some spikes, listen, and start working on the lock - through and in spite of the pain.

The analogy of an Iron Maiden fits twofold when considering that wounds must sometimes be reopened before they can be shared, and reopening wounds often requires someone else to do it for us, or at least help us muster the courage to do so. And not just anyone can do this for someone else. This is going to be someone who cares about you, deeply. Being with you while you reopen them requires putting themselves not in the position of the rescuer, but in that of the Maiden. There is no mechanism by which to safely reopen the wounds without the spikes that they provide by holding you accountable while also embracing your humanity. They will volunteer to stand firmly as the trigger for your pain and to experience it with you.

As a human being, there is a piece of them that, no matter how educated, practiced, or emotionally fortified they are, cannot help experiencing this as them hurting you; them causing you pain. That’s called being human together.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

And that brings us to the premise of this article.

As I continue to deconstruct and heal, I am going to be the trigger for, and/or the source from which, the hurt that I must process to be experienced by people who care about me, and who I care about. There’s no way around this. So, sometimes, even if I can endure more pain in my yearning for the warmth brought with it, there is only so deep I can allow the wound to be reopened, lest it cause real and consequential harm to the very loved ones attempting to help treat and mend it. The fear of ineffaceable damage to them is too unbearable, so I pull back. I restrain myself from deconstructing ‘that one thing’ – “because it’s too much”, “because nobody can know”, “because they can’t possibly believe me”, “because it makes ME the bad guy”.

How does this manifest in my day to day life? How do I experience it? How does it directly affect me?

That goes deep. Deeper than I myself currently understand, to be completely honest. But I’ll try to explain my best and most obvious example:

I’m not afraid of crying; alone, in public, or anywhere between. I am brought to tears rather easily these days, and often. Tears of sadness, joy, and even excitement come much more commonly than when I was young. And I am still a bit hesitant to share those moments with others but I am learning to accept the companionship of doing so in a comforting way. But I have been explicitly observant and aware for almost my entire conscious existence beyond childhood that I have not experienced weeping. I’m not saying that I haven’t mourned or grieved. I have, deeply. But I cannot recall the last time I cried so relentlessly that it triggered one of the ‘double breath’ thing we do so instinctively as children. There are literally guides on the Internet about the benefits of this breathing technique being used intentionally to soothe anxiety and feelings of distress. Which is where I learned how to do it manually and remember what it felt like. I think it would require a whole series of articles and probably many more hours talking with a deconstructing therapist to delve into the ‘why’ of this situation I find myself in. But the one thing that I am sure of is that the ability to fully “crash out”, “lose my shit”, or “just let it all out” has been stolen from me by a culture which has insisted that it was necessary to cull it from myself. That it was a weakness, a vulnerability to be exploited, a weapon that can only be wielded against me and those who love me: an ultimate point of failure in the human design.

“In the decay of weeping for the pain of the flesh lies the true rot of inhumanity! No corpse should be forced to operate without a soul! No body should endure existence robbed of the companionship of its spirit! Without the pain of conscious empathy, life cannot be. And without life, there is no purpose.” — Baelgrim Truhardt (fictional character)

I recognize that my healing journey is just beginning. And I know that part of that healing journey is quite literally learning how to let other people accept the consequences of being fully human with me. And I think it’s the only way that they can let me accept the consequences of being fully human with them. So I choose to push against the hot spikes, and it might sound crazy, but I’m grateful for the burns.