The tourniquet is an implement that is used to save lives.

It is applied to the body near a catastrophic fissure that is causing the person to lose incredible amounts of blood.   Without the tourniquet, the person would experience exsanguination, and eventual death, resulting from excessive blood loss, as a consequence of their wound or laceration.

The tourniquet is cinched tightly to the area that is hemorrhaging.  This area, due to a puncture, laceration, severe cut, or some other damage,  is unable to control the blood loss, and the exposure and gushing blood flow are perilous to the afflicted individual.

The intention of the tourniquet, is to stop this life-draining outpour of blood, so that the affected person does not perish, and can reach proper care to suture the wound.  This allows the person to recover from the massive trauma they have suffered, and to not lose life or limb as a result of the damage.

Emotionally, we apply tourniquets as well.  We take incredible trauma, and massive emotional assault, and we tie it off.  We stem the bleeding with hopes that we will heal, and may be repaired whole again.  We simply wish to survive, and to have our wounds stitched up, repaired, and to have all of our faculties and prowess restored, and available to us.

But when we experience puncture that requires a tourniquet, the gap that was ripped open, often heals in a way that leaves scars.

The scars remind us of the way the tourniquet saved our lives.  The tourniquet gave us enough time to survive, and to find help, and to mend, and to put ourselves back together.

The tourniquet is a bridge, a belt, and a salvation. It gives us opportunity.  It gives us the time to seek the assistance that we need.  It clings tightly to our being, and it fortifies our resolve to persevere.

It may take an entirely different form for each individual.  The tourniquet may be a song, or movie, or poem, a new intellectual pursuit, or hobby, or creative endeavor, or another person, or a physical activity, or a new personal quest, or challenge, it may be something that we never, in our past, could have imagined would help us…..

It doesn’t matter what form the tourniquet takes…..

ultimately, it helps us to survive.

Humbly yours,

J