I remember reading a book (of course, heh!) by Josephine Hart, Damage (also later a movie with Jeremy Irons in it), and thinking that when they discuss the young woman and she says she’s damaged goods, that was me.  I am damaged goods.  Too many hurts (like everyone), too many bad choices, too much…just too much

I’ve gotten better at dealing with my trigger spots being hit, though. Yesterday, I was helping one of the support staff with her computer issues. When I was done, she started “play-punching” me and “play-slapping” me on my face. I asked her to please stop in a very calm voice (which belied how crazy that made me feel). She looked at me as I scurried around the corner of her desk to be out of range. “I’m just playing with you,” she said.

I don’t like being hit in that way, in play or not, I responded.

She was hurt. I don’t know why but she was. She asked me if I had been abused as a child. I said, not really, no. I had been as an adult.

This was all quite personal, I thought, of a co-worker to be asking me.

She said she would be careful not to touch me in the future, then, no hugs, nothing. I told her that hugs were not the same as hitting…especially my face, my head, or my shoulders/arms area. She asked about pats on the back.

We were getting quite specific about all of this…and it worries me. Do I project something I shouldn’t? I merely asked her not to hit me.

I hope I’m becoming stronger, less of a victim.  I can’t say that’s true for me, though. I have walked into one abusive relationship after another. They are all different…the early ones were physically abusive…the latter have been emotionally abusive…but I stay (this does NOT include my current relationship. It does feel different.).

Therapy doesn’t hurt, either…it’s helping me get through a lot of stuff and pick better men.

What I wonder, though, is that aren’t we all “damaged” in some way or another?  Don’t we all come, especially as we age, to relationships with some sort of baggage? 

If we don’t, have we really lived