where the body (heart) had been

I first read about the concept of moral injury in articles about soldiers with PTSD. Their trauma extended not from the "usual" graphic violence of war, but from the fact that they played a role and took certain actions going against their moral core beliefs. It's one thing to undertake heinous acts for a perceived (moral) purpose, and another thing entirely to take those same exact actions for something not-so-fully or not-at-all believed in.

The fact that there is no choice in a war-type setting makes no difference. I think it's the knowledge of having perpetrated or contributed, irrevocably, to a version of the world that you do not want to see.

In investigating my own grief, it seems that I've found the corollary to this - the knowledge of having lived and acted toward the vision of the world I did want to see, and having it not turn out.

***

When I attended UU service on Sunday, one of the sermons was all about changing the parts of the world you can touch, and to embody the peace that you feel is missing from the world. It's no wonder that my attending service felt like a hot shower for the spirit. These are all the things that I believe, as told from another voice to a receptive community.

And yet, how do I "move on" from this corollary of a moral injury? Do I change what I think the world can be, or how I think I can contribute to it? And even if I feel that the "right" answer is not to change any of those things, and simply to go on, how do I get back to the place where I want to, again?

Because I can't shake this sense that love is for other people, that I can't quite believe it can happen for me because it resisted my efforts didn't grow into me or I didn't grow into it, that my best efforts didn't move it.

Love remains this powerful and most enduring concept, but with this newly built-in sense of separation, and it's painful to see, feel, even think about. I try to tell myself that it meant something, this having loved, that the fruits of labor are not mine but preserved somewhere, but ultimately I have no way of telling.

***

Sometimes I wonder if I just need to be shown again, that what I had always believed is indeed true. The prospect is too much to handle, maybe because I need it too much while I simultaneously don't want to need it at all. Or perhaps more accurately - I don't want to know if I need it or not, because I don't want to be defined either way, I don't want it shown to others or myself that something happened here. I know it full well and it shouldn't be too much to ask not to be reminded.

Because grief is the pain that seeps all the way through. And absent the possibility of a full scene clean there's always going to be that evidence.