HURT PEOPLE VERSUS HEALED PEOPLE.

I have seen the saying, “Hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people.” One of the connotations of this is that hurt people have to be excused because they were hurt. This goes so far, and one of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous after admitting that you have a problem, is seeking to forgive those who hurt you, but also making amends for what you did.

I remember, as an 18-year-old, being angry because I had been hurt through my life. I was angry that when I went to visit my grandparents as a kid and teenager that I wanted to sit and talk to my grandparents but was forced by my mother to go outside with my brother to do what HE wanted to do. I was angry that I was bullied so viciously at school. Okay, I didn’t get into university on my first attempt, but second best was not what I was prepared to accept and for this reason. I remember reading that the former leader of the Victorian Liberal Party, who twice stood against and twice failed to defeat former Premier Daniel Andrews, said in high school that it was his ambition to become Premier. I didn’t brag that I would one day be State Premier or Prime Minister, but when I was asked what I wanted to do and mentioned history and Japanese, was ridiculed by my fellow students and cast as a nerd. I didn’t care about being cast as a nerd. But the bullies at school were keen to see me fail at whatever I did. It didn’t worry me that I was overlooked to be a prefect, as my grandfather said, when my father wanted to nominate him for a knighthood for services to agriculture, “Sir Alfred Wynn?! Don’t be ridiculous!” He also said that many such awards were determined not on the basis of what you knew, but who. And that was the case for some prefects at school. I was determined to prove the bullies wrong and prove them wrong I did.

The thing is, however, you can only hold these things together for a certain amount of time, before events of the past keep saying, “Deal with it.” And to heal you have to be able to talk about what happened to you, to feel the emotions you felt at the time. Then you can be a healed person, and then you can move forward and help others.