When the wound speaks, when presence responds

Poem of the Innocent
by José Watanabe

How eager the sun is
in the sands of Chicama.
So tie the four corners of your handkerchief over your head
and go chase the useless lizard
among those trees already burned by the sun's cruelty.
Of all delicacies, the sun's is the cruelest—
it consumes trees and lizards while sparing their skins.
Fix in your memory that lesson of the landscape,
and this one too:
when you approached the dry tree with a trivial match
and it flared up suddenly and wildly
as if made of gunpowder.
Don't blame yourself—who could have predicted such disaster!
And accept it: the fire was already there,
tense and contained under the bark,
waiting for your trivial gesture, your mischief.
Remember that sudden havoc (its untranslatable beauty)
without regret,
because it was you—but not really.
Thus,
in everything.

When the wound speaks, when presence responds

Relationships have a unique way of challenging us, stripping us bare.
They have an irritating talent for exposing parts of ourselves that would otherwise remain hidden, small, almost invisible.

It's as if someone had found the map to where we ache and where we long, and knew exactly how to touch those places with surgical precision.

A relationship like this exerts an irresistible pull.
It has the dangerous beauty of a river in flood.
It's not comfortable, but something in us keeps returning to the whirlpool, to the vortex.

We return because something in us knows that truth is there—our truth—
waiting like a pearl in the depth, in the softness, in the dark, in the heart of that mollusk that is our life.

Sometimes we find the pearl.
Sometimes we find only silence, disorder, confusion.
But even that is part of the path toward truth, toward transparency.

A relationship like this confronts us with what we cannot control.
There are corners we no longer dare to pass through, because she is there. Because he is there.
There are words we can't hear without a shiver inside, without a reaction we wish we didn’t have.

There are silences that become unbearable, and gestures that undo us.
Someone holds power over us: over what we do, what we think, what we feel.
Someone awakens pain, anger, fear, or sadness within us—feelings we wish weren’t there, but they are.

Thoughts we’d rather not have—but we do.
A thirst we believed quenched—but still consumes us.
A wound we assumed healed—but still bleeds.

In situations like these, we often blame the other:
You make me act this way, feel this way, think this way.
You awaken this part of me I’d rather lock away in its frozen prison—
abandoned, desperate, fragile… and out of control.

If only you would change. If only you respected me, loved me, listened to me…
Our heart gets caught in a web of burning maybes and screams, "It’s your fault", as if that could set us free.
But it doesn’t. It only burns. It only consumes.

The labyrinth of wanting the other to be different has no exit, because the other is who they are.
Sometimes that difference hurts, but asking them not to be who they are rarely works.
Being who they are is part of their role in our story.

That doesn’t mean we excuse harmful behavior or dismiss necessary boundaries,
but it does mean that our fixation on changing the other often keeps us from what truly needs our attention: what’s moving inside.

The other apparent escape is to blame ourselves.
To think there’s something fundamentally broken in us.
"It’s what I deserve." "I always ruin things." "I am the problem."

And from that place, we withdraw. We isolate.
We build distance like a silent sentence.
We try to protect the other from ourselves, and protect ourselves from the shame of carrying a raw, animal part that seems only capable of hurting.

But self-blame doesn’t free us either.
It only changes the direction of the whip.

Either way, we remain trapped in the past.
Our mind replays what was said, what was done, what was left unsaid—over and over again.
If only we could go back… But we can’t.

Our first challenge is this: to land in reality.
To see what was, what is, what’s out of our control.
And to allow ourselves to feel what hurts, even when resistance rises to shield us.

Something in us whispers: Not there. Not today. Maybe never.
It’s not easy to name it: I felt betrayed. I felt used. I felt humiliated.
It’s not easy to name the emotions that come with it: anger, guilt, shame, fear, sadness…
It’s not easy to inhabit a body that’s been numb for so long.

And yet, that’s where what we seek is found:
the ability to feel—while being held—what we couldn’t feel before.
To put words to what used to be silence.
To relate to it without denying it.

That’s how we reconnect with the part of ourselves that froze.
The one that once said: I can’t feel this.
The one that had to disconnect to survive.
And when we give it space, we also open the door to our innate ability to be here, now, with everything we are.

Our mind has many ways of keeping us away from that place:
we explain, spiritualize, rationalize, avoid, joke, minimize, project, dramatize…
These are all strategies.
They once helped us not fall apart.

Today, we can thank them. And also ask:
Do they still serve me? Or are they keeping me from the present?

The second challenge is this: to recognize that what the relationship triggers was already in me.
The sense of not being enough, of needing to give everything, of not being allowed to say no.

This isn’t about denying the other’s impact or justifying the unjustifiable.
There are bonds that wound, and others that perpetuate old wounds.
But it is about turning inward and seeing what trembles there.

Because that tremor often shapes our perception.
When our body is in survival, it sees the present through the lens of the past.
It’s not just a story—it’s a physiology.

The third challenge is to bring compassion to the part of us that became identified with the wound.
That says: I am what happened to me.

That part is, in truth, a young one. A child who adapted as best they could.
Who turned that adaptation into thoughts, habits, and compulsive behaviors that now get triggered at the smallest sign of danger.
External signs, yes—but also internal ones. The body remembers.

Sometimes we’re hypervigilant. Sometimes frozen.
And that’s not a flaw. It’s what we learned.

But if we want new possibilities, we must be able to see what’s happening.
To name it. To bring awareness.

My body is showing me something.
My emotions are alerting me.
Is what I’m interpreting really true?
Or am I reliving something old?

Could this moment mean something else?
Am I listening to my body, or repeating an old defense?
Does the intensity of this reaction match what’s actually happening?

To bring compassion to what once protected us, but now limits us—
that is the great act of self-love.
Not to erase it, but to accompany it.
To say to it: “You’re not alone anymore.”

The fourth challenge is to take this into our lives.
What does this part of me need when it’s activated?
How can I give myself a moment to choose, instead of reacting automatically?

Where can I find support, grounding, co-regulation?

Because relationships, for all their challenges, can also be possibilities.
Not because we stay where it hurts.
Not because we force ourselves to tolerate what’s unbearable.
But because, maybe for the first time, we’re seeing clearly.

Because we are now able to respond differently. Because we can do what we wish the other had done:
See. Listen. Love.

And that opens the possibility for the relationship to become a conversation again—
not an exchange of monologues.

But for that to happen, we need an inner root.
To return, again and again, to our source.
Because only when I hold myself, can I hold space with another. Only when I listen to myself, can I truly listen without demand.

The relationship transforms when I can show up truthfully,
with clear boundaries and an open heart.
And that begins in me.

To take responsibility is not to blame myself.
It’s to say honestly: “I’m seeing the world through a wounded place. I need to take care of me.”
And from there, to choose with more clarity, more care, more truth.

To set a boundary, if needed.
To name a need.
To tend to who I am.

Not to be perfect.
But to be present.

By Andrés Jiménez