[TM] Injured
Aug. 14th, 2011 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jasongideonGideon had what he called the “two heartbreak rule.”
It wasn’t his, in fact he had heard it from a social worker in Los Angeles when he was still a rookie and it had struck that profound chord truisms tend to do so he kept it and folded it into his own philosophy. Put simply; it said the only difference between someone who is a whole, healthy, contributing member of society and the ones who huddled under bridges, and stole for their next hit was two major, life changing injuries. It could be the death of a love one, the fall to addiction, the lost of a job or the returning of a war-haunted solider to what we called civilization. It could be finding the wife in bed with another man, or coming gradually into the realization that one in your bed is not who you want there, not even the right gender.
And once you understand that, once you embrace that the line between “us” and “them” isn’t as gaping as you first thought: all the doors open up. Then you can understand, and God willing, you can help them.
Gideon had always believed that. It was as center to his core and sense of self as his own name. Even more so then his name really, for reasons not many knew. His injuries he wore like armor. He kept them to the forefront for the ones he helped and hunted because like hurt animals; there is a kinship there just beneath the surface that stands out. Hurt knows hurt and for thirty years, he used that- he saved lives and stored them up like defenses against his own as if he could temper the pain with a book of faces he saved.
It doesn’t work that way. It never does.
But he lies to himself and says it will; because sometimes, just sometimes- he can ease the heartbreak, even ignore it. And for one more day, he can pretend the line is a little clearer than it really is.
Jason Gideon
Criminal Minds
341
It wasn’t his, in fact he had heard it from a social worker in Los Angeles when he was still a rookie and it had struck that profound chord truisms tend to do so he kept it and folded it into his own philosophy. Put simply; it said the only difference between someone who is a whole, healthy, contributing member of society and the ones who huddled under bridges, and stole for their next hit was two major, life changing injuries. It could be the death of a love one, the fall to addiction, the lost of a job or the returning of a war-haunted solider to what we called civilization. It could be finding the wife in bed with another man, or coming gradually into the realization that one in your bed is not who you want there, not even the right gender.
And once you understand that, once you embrace that the line between “us” and “them” isn’t as gaping as you first thought: all the doors open up. Then you can understand, and God willing, you can help them.
Gideon had always believed that. It was as center to his core and sense of self as his own name. Even more so then his name really, for reasons not many knew. His injuries he wore like armor. He kept them to the forefront for the ones he helped and hunted because like hurt animals; there is a kinship there just beneath the surface that stands out. Hurt knows hurt and for thirty years, he used that- he saved lives and stored them up like defenses against his own as if he could temper the pain with a book of faces he saved.
It doesn’t work that way. It never does.
But he lies to himself and says it will; because sometimes, just sometimes- he can ease the heartbreak, even ignore it. And for one more day, he can pretend the line is a little clearer than it really is.
Jason Gideon
Criminal Minds
341
