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Key points
- We all have "dents"—they are the scars of trauma, loss, and unfulfilled longing.
- We can choose whether or not to define ourselves, or allow another to define us, only by our dents and scars.
- Resilience has much to do with what we choose to let our dents and scars "mean" for us.
It was perfectly round and had an unusually thick stem. When I picked it up to see it all around, I noticed the indentation on one side.
I hesitated. I put it down, looked at other pumpkins. Picked up another perfectly round one. Sturdy stem. But again, there was an indentation on one side. Clearly these pumpkins had laid on their side, languidly soaking up every drop of water and summer sunshine that fell on their bright orange skin.
Funny how even a pumpkin can set my mind spinning metaphors. Like these: All of us, I, have dents, dings, and other imperfections that press in on us, maybe even oppress us from within.
Our dents, unfortunately, aren’t caused by sunbathing in the garden all summer long.
A professor I had during my freshman year of college said that, as he saw it, our scars are interesting because they offer a roadmap of our lives. They show where we have been, what we have survived. Scars are our physical dents. Our ability to carry on in spite of them comes from resilience.
But what of the scars within? The scars of trauma. Of loss. Carved in our hearts from an unfulfilled longing for what used to be—or might have been.
Those dents don’t necessarily show on the outside. But we do reveal the ways they have shaped (or misshaped) us—in how we live our lives, how we interact with those we love and others we don’t know, the compassion we show others knowing that we all carry scars and we all have dents.
Our dents become problematic—oppress us from within—when we convince ourselves that they are “the” thing that defines us. Our dents and scars can become our identity if we let them. We let the (perhaps far distant) past trauma, too often inflicted by someone we thought loved us, overshadow and undermine our ability to stay focused on and enjoy today. We surrender our own agency, our power to define and put those events into a healthy perspective that lets us function at our best.
Here’s an example from my life. As I wrote this, I was marking the 19th anniversary of the date—October 27, 2005–when my doctor called to share the results of my recent lab work. I don’t remember anything much he said after “I have bad news on the HIV test.”
Of the many “before and after” moments in my life, my diagnosis was one of the starkest and hardest to get used to. It took a while to get used to this new reality that included taking a pill every day, and seeing my doctor every few months for more lab work to make sure the medication was keeping the virus in check.
It also took a while, and more than one experience, to get used to the fact that there are people—including gay men—who persist in seeing someone living with HIV, no matter how well managed it is, as seriously damaged goods. They often describe themselves as “clean,” implying that people like me are soiled, unworthy of their consideration, maybe even unworthy of love itself.
They look at the “pumpkin” that caught their eye—just the right shape and size—but then see the dent. And they reject the dented pumpkin. They can’t, or won’t, see their own humanity in this dented pumpkin.
Maybe it’s fear. These days it’s likely ignorance of how very far HIV treatment has progressed to the point that both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Tony Fauci say that an HIV-positive person whose virus is medically managed to the point it is undetectable in standard blood tests cannot transmit the virus through sex. “Undetectable = Untransmittable,” is how it’s described.
It took a while to realize the real dent, the kind that oppresses from within, belongs to the one who rejects the perfectly fine pumpkin because it happens to have an indentation on one side.
What if I allowed that fear and ignorance-driven attitude to haunt my heart and mind? What if I only thought of myself as “HIV-positive John”? I know how that can go. I have heard the stories of poor souls who stop taking their medication because they believe they “deserve” to suffer the ravages of a deadly virus, that they are being punished.
I have never bought that line. We live in a dangerous world where even invisible microbes can do great harm to our bodies. We never see people moralizing against someone with a common cold because, well, it’s common.
But the judges and moralists don't hesitate to trot out their stocks and whipping posts when a sexually transmitted infection is involved. For them living with HIV “means” all sorts of terrible things about me, not simply that I made a choice at some point that brought harsh consequences for me—as humans often do.
We all make choices that can harm us. But we also make choices about what we tell ourselves our dents “mean.” Does living with HIV—my dent, certainly one of them—disqualify me from being worthy of love? Does your dent, whatever it may be, mean that the love you offer as a friend or partner is less precious than someone else’s love?
Funny how even a pumpkin can set my mind spinning metaphors
