WALKING WOUNDED noun
casualties, as of a military conflict, who are wounded but ambulatory.
Informal. persons who have been damaged or defeated psychologically or emotionally by their experiences in life.
Most of us have heard the term “walking wounded” when it comes to war. Soldiers who have been injured in some way but are still able to function at least well enough to make their way off the battlefield.
But in 1990, I came into contact with the second meaning, the one that affects far more people.
Of course, I had experienced it numerous times before but didn’t realize it.
Nearly all of us are damaged in some way or another, and even if we think we have gotten over it, that damage usually affects us in some way or another for many years afterward.
The one that always comes to mind first is lost love. It’s true that there are some people who hit the jackpot the first time out and stay together forever. I have a cousin two years younger than me who married the first girl he ever dated and has stayed with her ever since.
They have children, grandchildren and might possibly be closing in on great grandchildren.
Exceptions prove the rule.
Most of us have been hurt at least once, and the more often that happens, the more difficult it is to be open and trusting the next time.
My first real girlfriend broke up with me 50 years ago this fall. The breakup was sort of a shock, and it happened because something traumatic happened in her life. We didn’t speak or meet again for 30 years, crossing paths at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
She was a delegate, I was a columnist.
No, I didn’t write about her.
I had suffered through other failed relationships, including a marriage, but I never thought about the concept of “walking wounded” until 1990. It was my first summer in Los Angeles, and I met someone whose personality and interests seemed to mesh perfectly with mine.
Things got better and better, but before we had been together even one month, she ended it out of the blue and wouldn’t say why.
It was the summer of “Pretty Woman,” and the song by Roxette – “It Must Have Been Love” – seemed to be on my car radio a dozen times a day.
I never did find out what happened, but I wrote a never-published novel about a similar situation.
I called it “Walking Wounded.”
The irony of it was that the book was the best thing that came out of the relationship, but as I upgraded from one computer to another in the early ‘90s, the manuscript was lost in the transition.
I have thought about rewriting it. It wasn’t a bad story, but I came to realize that it was a novel that had been written as therapy and once I worked the poison out of my system, I didn’t have what it took to tell the story again.
Two years later, in September 1992, I met Nicole and everything changed for the better. From the beginning of my dating days up till I met her, there were five different women I was serious enough about that I either married (one) or would have married (four).
But as special as any of them seemed to me at the time, Nicole was always going to be the one. She too was walking wounded, after a 17-year marriage that ended in divorce.
It isn’t like everything has been perfect, but both of us decided when we married that there wasn’t going to be a divorce. We would work through whatever needed to be worked through, and after nearly 28 years of marriage, we did it successfully.
Of course, there’s more to wounds than personal relationships. Some people are badly damaged in relationships with employers and find themselves flinching every time their bosses look at them.
I was fired exactly once in my career, but it ended my life as an employee. I was one of about a thousand Southern California journalists canned in the 2008 recession. I was 58 and planning to retire at 60 anyway, but it was incredibly traumatic.
I was fortunate that we had reached a point where I didn’t really need to work anymore, because I really couldn’t imagine taking orders from anyone. So I’ve been writing, blogging, etc., and taking care of my wife through a myriad of health problems.
At 70, I don’t think I’m really expected to draw a paycheck.
Walking wounded?
That’s me, but at least it didn’t kill me.
Is there a point to all this? Yes, believe it or not, there is. Unless you are one of the most fortunate people in the world – or you’re too young to be reading this – you are walking wounded in one way or another.
And old Freddie Nietzsche wasn’t wrong when he said that which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Neither was his buddy Ernie Hemingway when he wrote that the world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.
Everybody gets hurt one way or another.
The true winners in life don’t let that stop them from accomplishing what they want to accomplish.
Walking wounded doesn’t mean walking dead.
That’s a whole different deal.