Achilles heel

Everyone has one. We gather from Greek mythology that they were the only points on the mighty warrior’s body that was not immune to any harm. In other words, it is a deadly weakness, that one thing that weakens you beyond recognition. If you know where or what your point of weakness is, then you should guard it jealously, if not, it is a massive shock to the system when it takes a hit. But what makes the point of weakness so mortal is that you have very little control or protection over it and can only stand by often completely helpless while damage is being done. It would not be a weakness otherwise.

One may argue that one’s offspring, parents, spouse, even best friend or national hero can prove to be a target for the fatal blow from an enemy, speaking figuratively of course. It doesn’t always go without saying that you would lay your life for a loved one, in fact there are many who won’t, but it is not until you find yourself in situation that you realise that everything else is secondary, including yourself, that you become certain you will do anything to make it right.  But first you have to pick yourself up and recover from that blinding blow. It is as though someone has reached inside and scooped out everything inside, your heat, your spine, your very essence; the true meaning of the word gutted. You just want to curl up and die but quitting is not an option, leaving you in a desperate state of turmoil, vulnerable and completely devastated.

As much as I believe that everything happens for a reason, in the thick of it, everything feels like a thick heavy raincloud. It always works out in the end. I once told a friend that tribulation is a rite of passage, and I meant it, but these words of encouragement are easier to deliver than they are to receive.

However horrible this period gets, like love, it is better to have suffered loss than never to have loved at all, the absence of a point of mortal weakness would render one not immortal but inhuman. The very things that make us human are the very things that destroy us; as they say, nothing is not worth living for if it is not worth dying for.