TO LOVE A BROKEN THING

What is it about pain that is so fatally attractive? What is about the dashing troubled, the eccentric misfits (whose eccentricities only shield a deep underlying pain); what is it about the wounded souls that we just can’t resist?

Have you ever loved a broken person? I don’t mean the rascally or the unadulteratedly wicked; I don’t mean the ones who are troubled by their own choosing, and hurt others because they can.  I mean the broken things; the souls that have seen the brunt of life, the ones that sheath their pains and try to rise above it, the ones that always, except by some miracle, fall into their darkness no matter how they try – as we who have loved them have found. What is it about them?

I have tried to understand. But even my experience with this phenomenon has not helped me to reach any cogent conclusion.

I remember that someone once told me that I have no pain in my eyes, in a way that suggested that it made me less attractive; at the time, I did not understand. I still remember, that someone else later told me (after certain incidents that she did not know about) that I have a sadness that lingers in my eyes, in a way that suggested that it made me attractive. I remember, that I too have loved a person, that I know was broken at the time – and I realise now that their pain was what helped me to truly love them. And I have seen pain, con a person into falling so deeply in love with another, and yet, I still don’t understand. By my experiences, I can say I have flirted with this concept practically and from both sides, and yet, I cannot seem to understand it.

What I have found however, is that there might be a mechanism in the human mind that makes pain, sadness, darkness (anything that looks like it) so attractive to us. It is perhaps, a mechanism similar to compassion, but something different. Because it can’t be compassion; compassion does not have the depth to drive such attraction. Or does it?  Speaking of depth, perhaps it has something to do with the depth that we somehow feel exists in their souls; because pain has a way of creating such depth or an illusion of it at least. There is something so touching, so enthralling, so deep about the fact that these persons are not merely ordinary, but possess a ‘sublime’ touch with life, due to their experiences.

So, is it this depth? Or is it instinct? I remember someone once told me that men have a natural instinct to protect and women have a natural instinct to repair. So, now I am wondering, perhaps it is a glitch in this wiring; perhaps this natural encoding drives us to be attracted to the broken. Maybe it is the purgation that comes with realizing how much they suffer and the consequent instinct to protect or repair them, respectively. But is that it? Is that why pain is so attractive? Because there is something in us that drives us by instinct to try to remove it from others?

Or is it something else? Is it a need to identify?  I have found that we sometimes find love, where we find demons like our own; in the disturbed places, in the troubled souls, in the mosaic of buried scars, in the eyes of people who have tasted the brunt of life, like we have. It is just like how they say ‘deep calls unto deep’; pain, it would seem, calls unto pain. Are we all victims of this paradox? And it is in fact a paradox, because love should seek to complete itself, to find the things that it does not possess. But does love merely seek to find itself? Even so, we are not all broken, so I can’t say for sure that it is the need to identify that drives this phenomenon.

I still haven’t found my answer yet; maybe I never will. These things are elusive like this, but maybe that is not so bad. Maybe the fun is in trying to understand; maybe the thrill is in the journey itself. And In my journey, I have so far found out that for some reason, the broken people are the most beautiful; or seem to be the most beautiful. There is something disarming about the broken, the struggling, the hurt, something about these people whose eyes show glimpses of some storm, some war inside, that makes them extraordinarily beautiful. Yet, beauty comes at a price. I have found that loving them, comes with a repercussion; and that fatal attraction, that overwhelming drive to save often blinds us so we do not see these risks. Because loving a broken person can break you and will almost certainly break you. Because in those moments when they relapse into their darkness, nothing can save you.

Also, I have also found that in some rare occasions, when we eventually succeed in nursing them back into health, we are allowed a taste of infinity; even for a second.

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PS: I use the word ‘broken’ inclusively. I realise that not all suffering or pained people are broken per se.

So, tell me reader, what is your experience with this? Do you think pain attracts? Why does it?

Please, share your thoughts.