Unleashing the Wound

A Boxing Tournament Episode #12

Over a cup of coffee weeks ago, a friend tried to explain to me the concept of a wound. I came out of the conversation with a visual; the beginning of every school year as a child. Every class had its own notebook. Every notebook started with a first lesson. Every year, not a single notebook survived tearing several pages at the beginning of every class. I would tear the first page then the second and so on to get rid of every imperfection either in spelling or hand writing till a page survives the challenge and proves to deserve becoming a first page.

Due to the nature of the notebooks, every torn page from the front was tied to another at the end and this is how every torn page had to leave with a blank paper from the end in spite of the fact that the latter was still blank.

As a child, I did not realize that in life, every early abandonment meant an end of something that did not even get to start. The absence of such realization led to a teenage despising any objection from my superiors towards my strong desire to end any activity that did not start as perfectly as I wished.

Years passed and adulthood came with depth of responsibilities and shallow knowledge of what tiny habits of childhood reflected in the process of one of the most important imposed requirements of adulthood: Maturity.

A wound, for an adult, meant a physical opening somewhere with traces of recent or past graphic trauma. Nobody warned us that wounds in the soul were much more graphic in a way that maybe they should come with a warning tag when spoken of like the one that comes with physical graphic images that follow wars in the press. Maybe because “Modern ethics” have been capable of drawing lines around what is seen more than what is felt not out of bad intentions but maybe because nonphysical inner wounds are only found in psychiatry text books and clinics as well psychologists  and sociologists publications or counseling sessions designed by the former and the latter. That in itself is an issue when you are a sociologist yourself who recalls the number one rule in  social work classes in college: Do not get personally involved in your cases or clients! My professors and trainers got me well prepared for that in a way that I did better than them at a very early stage; I never got involved and remained as objective as possible except for a few times when even then I contained my break downs resulting from a certain degree of subjectivity in a minor breakdown in my  bedroom. Those breakdowns to me were dealt with as minor symptoms of a researcher’s subjectivity, which make up products helped a great deal covering the morning after before the conference/meeting/workshop that applauded my research findings would start. What my college classes and trainings did not advise was what to do when the case/the client is me?

Maturity, the most recognizable requirement of adulthood, is decorated in a manner that makes inner wounds too childish to acknowledge especially when the wounded is “Accomplished”. Maturity is that social demand that considers songs depicting wounds in all languages and genres beautiful and honors its composers and lyrics writers. However, these social demands are schizophrenic enough  to dismiss the same tunes when the “Accomplished” use them to manifest their wounds because in the world of mature adulthood, successful individuals should know better than to dedicate enough effort into recognizing something that is too “Abstract”. In best cases, the modern world has assigned clinics and medication to leash the wounds as leashing or any other measure at any cost is needed for the successful to continue the workflow. In this world of success pursue, there is no place for inner wounds or wounds at all. In other words, there is enough Prozac and Advil to keep us going.

For a year and a half of the longest  writers’ block I have ever experienced, I blocked the block to succeed and write professionally. Reports, studies and papers kept on coming as long as I leashed the wound. The wound was leashed enough to produce academic writing, but not enough to overcome the one block that mattered; the block between me and this blog. A blog on a boxing tournament of a life time did not work well with the level of professionalism needed when you write , academically, for a living. This blog is the one place where the wound fails to be leashed and ,therefore, it had to be abandoned with its imperfections that are similar to the pages I tore from every new notebook at the beginning of every school year.

To the contrary of my constant steps towards maturity dismissing wounds and their songs by tearing flawed pages to achieve and succeed, I have decided to put it all aside and as unaccomplished, unsuccessful and immature as it can get, I have decided to abandon everything and weep. I have decided to weep and moan and stitch the pages together towards the imperfect adulthood I must reconcile with. I have officially entered my mourning period not to heal but to find the wound.

The coming blog posts will mourn what social maturity considered imperfect pages that stood in the way of success. They will look further into the possibility of keeping the pages simply for the sheer desire of knowing what the blank ones on the back could/could have held.

After one year and a half, the wound shall be unleashed. This time, no graphic warning tags will guard what is abstract enough to be the one thing that is real.