The Myth of the Band Aid

Remember when you were a small kid and you would fall and scrape your knee? You would burst into instant tears and race over to mom. She would smile at you, give you a hug and sit you down. She would look at your knee and tell you it would be right in a minute. Then she would grab a band aid, stick it on the scrape and kiss it all better.

Simple, right? It worked like a charm too! In a matter of seconds you were back on your feet running and jumping and scraping more knees, crying and getting more band aids. As we grew up the power of the band aid remained fresh in our minds. No matter the situation, if we got scraped or cut and it hurt, we would grab a band aid and stick it on. It was the equivalent of ‘kissing it all better’ which remained with us throughout adolescence. We thought everything could be fixed with a band aid.

Well, most external wounds I guess. The internal ones though, they are incapable of healing with a simple band aid. Yet, some people even late into adulthood still feel that if they stick a 10cm band aid over a 20cm gaping, blood gushing wound, that it would fix it up and you would be right as rain. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is difficult to reverse once it’s so ingrained in the skulls of people.

And broken hearts? Don’t even get me started on that. As I sit here and type this I am nursing my own little broken and crumbling heart. Someone might even call it a manipulative heart (this I say with distaste and is half the reason I am in a state of nursing). I am one of the vast majority of people who have come to terms with the myth of the band aid. Yet, the reason I am sitting here falling apart and barely able to smile is that I have found myself with the converse. A person who easily believes that putting a band aid over my broken heart will mend it up in a jiffy and everything can go back to normal. I mean, he put a band aid on it for goodness sakes! I should have no reason to be downtrodden or emotional or even slightly unbalanced. The band aid is magic! Once it is there all the problems magically disappear along with it just like the pain did when mom kissed you all better.

I wish that were true. I wish all it took was a band aid to forget the words that were said and the words that were not. I wish it could clear my memory. I wish it could make up for the lack of care and love deserved to myself when I needed it most. I wish it could undo all the tears and the nights spent crying myself to sleep waiting for him to care. I really do wish the band aid was magical. Maybe then I would not feel like we were sweeping problems beneath the carpet while the band aid was being soaked by a wound too deep to be simply patched up.

If only mom could kiss it all better.

Unfortunately the band aid was a lie.

And I continue to bleed out…