Scars

When I think about scars odd things come to mind. I’m referring specifically to the literal concept of scars, as opening the topic of figurative scars would necessitate a much bigger format.

I have a lot of scars, which is weird to realize. Does my tattoo count as a scar? I wonder. The permanent marks that are on my body that weren’t there at my birth. . . I wonder if the bright red stretch marks across my recently enlarged belly will disappear someday. Will they, too, be a permanent reminder of a past indulgence?

How many scars do I have? Well, there’s the large slash mark across the back of my left hand, where I brushed up against the top of my old roommate’s toaster oven. It happened a year ago, and though it was painful, I never thought it would create a scar. Yet there it is- a slight discoloration, ovular and long, parallel to my knuckles. It could be a birthmark. Just this writing about it conjures up a tangible image of that apartment. It’s dinginess, the pungency of old cigarettes, the yellowed timbre of the light- I could be there right now. The loneliness, too, seems to hang about in that memory. There are the sounds of This American Life playing in the background, a distant online chat looming from the bedroom. This is what I get from pondering the back of my hand too long.

I am wearing a short-sleeved dress today, so the next scar I’m drawn to is a small constellation near the crook of my left elbow. Ever visible to me, rarely seen by others, these four lines are imperfectly lengthened and imperfectly paralleled. They shine from a distant time and sometimes I wonder if they persevere in existence primarily because I prize them so. Do I will these faint scars into persistence? Perhaps. These are battle scars, and they are the first of their kind on my body. I pause for a moment to do math that should be quick, but because it’s attached to emotion, to experience, to memory, it takes a bit longer. Eventually I figure a sum: 6 years plus a few months. . . 6 years plus a few eons.

Such a short time ago, really. These scars are from self-inflicted wounds. They are detritus from a time of pain. Actually they are from a time without pain, a time when I needed to feel something, when it was easier to feel a pain that I had control of than to let loose the pain within. That torrent would have been uncontrollable.

Eighteen years old and I had no clue what to do with anger. I was continually frightened that if I let the secret feelings I had out that they would destroy everything. I believed my anger didn’t exist, I forced myself to have almost no feelings beyond the utterly permissible. This resulted in my life as a sympathetic automaton, capable of generous thought but never able to truly hear or understand any depth of feeling. I think I would have stayed like that forever if I could have, terrified to look at my true feelings. But as luck, or god, or the Universe would have it, that was not an option.

Every scar seems to have an entire world within it, and I haven’t even begun to think about the small scars on my abdomen. Of course just typing that sentence makes those memories rise. Three discreet little lines, surgically created, neatly closed. A nicely punctuated belly.

I’m not sure what to say about this set of scars. What remains to be said? They are there. They are the remains of a great loss. They remind me of what it is to hope for love, to long for a relief to loneliness, and to be helpless in the midst of grief. These scars remind me that the life I lead could have been very different. As if I needed the scars to remind me.

As if much more than a day could go by without thinking about that time. There is a part of me that worries that I will forever live in the shadow of that time. Hope is the the thing with feathers, and I am perpetually singing the tunes without the words, but as yet my life is still very much affected by that particular procedure and everything that happened before and after it.

It was a particular kind of loneliness. I was alone and I was scared, and at the same time I had friends across the country willing to listen to me late into the night. Willing to assure me that things would be ok.

I don't think I have much else to say about scars. Or at least about these ones. There's still the tiny scratch from my childhood pet, and Good Goddess would that come with an entire chapter about that poor little kitten. I think that for today at least, this is enough.