Broken people save broken people
Trauma changes you.
Emotional Trauma can be both subjective and objective. It may be a loss of a friend or a loved one, the loss of parents, a bad breakup/divorce, or even your inability to fight against some social injustice.
Nevertheless, trauma changes you. Perhaps trauma is not the right word to use here. Certainly, I’m not discussing the trauma war veterans go through.
When you are walking through a muddy road, a little patch of grass or a pile of stones provides you the grip to traverse the path safely. Some people in life are like that green patch.
They provide you with a grip when you are navigating through the slippery slopes of life.
Extend your arm first
Broken people is not a very fancy word to describe an empathetic human being. For the lack of a better word, I am going ahead with that. When you are going through a crisis, you might not be interested in socializing with your fraternity. Interacting with a stranger is the last thing you want to do.
The Broken Strangers I met have always given me the benefit of doubt, even when I restrained from providing a fake smile to them.
They can identify the real people with real-life experiences from the fortunate ones who are yet to be hit by the train called life.
It takes a huge amount of trust to be able to do that. That extra bit of care enables us to take a leap of faith and move one step closer to being ourselves with them.
Being vulnerable
We tend to forget the fact that the solutions to our problems can be found in history or just by taking a wider look around the present world. People battling their inner demons often feel so isolated in the world. My initial thoughts during any crisis goes like ‘why the hell is this only happening to me?’. Broken people revisit their painful past along with us. It is not to discuss ‘what ifs’, but may be to prove the point,
‘If I can have the will to survive and cherish, why not you?’
People who have faced some huge setbacks in life know the importance of second chances. Life is a one-way trip, so explore all the possibilities, and enable beautiful changes in others' lives.
Self-care
I never understood why women were so interested in makeup. I always looked down upon their interest in external looks, or how the world perceived them. But then one of my closest friends went through a major health crisis, where she lost the ability to walk like a normal healthy person. She required extensive support just to do a normal walk around the garden. She was really scared of attending any social gatherings as she will be judged by senseless idiots. Even for all my talk about uplifting other human beings, I was not much help other than cracking dumb jokes to uplift the mood.
Then came along another mutual friend who was new to the place, and wanted to try a new spa. She deliberately played dumb about not knowing directions to the place. Both of them eventually went there. That was the first time she went out of the house in six months. The mutual friend secretly told me
This threading and makeup stuff. It’s like a self-care routine. You cannot take care of anyone if you can’t take care of yourself.
Do things that you like
Most of us who have ever been in a relationship have tried to be this different version of ourselves which is completely unlike our true selves. But always find time to do the things that you like. The things which make hours go by like minutes. It feels like love. Where you forget for a little while about the daily hassle of human existence. There’s a high chance that these hobbies or passion projects draws your friends and loved ones closer to you.
Final thoughts
Throughout history, people who have experienced the most traumatic events have left timeless, selfless wisdom. Holocaust survivors are the easiest example I can cite. The title doesn’t mean that broken people go preaching about life to others. Enabling and empowering others is not their day job. But like my friend’s story, her braveness unknowingly saved me and provided me with the firepower to face the upcoming battles. Standing on your people’s shoulders is better than standing alone. Just listening to my broken people has been life-changing and life-affirming for me so far. After all, in these 3.8 billion years of life on earth, you are here today and now. And that’s the only thing that counts!
