Scars

When I was little, I went to a gift shop near a white water rafting rental. There was a shirt in a gift store that proclaimed "Scars are tattoos with better stories". As a kid the two seemed equally undesirable, as an adult I beg to differ.

While going to a Tattoo parlor doesn't have the supposed glamour of falling out of a canoe into a river or off a motorcycle, Tattooing is an art form and they are often gotten to commemorate things one wants to be reminded of every day.

Scars by contrast tell their own stories and often much less pleasant ones. Not necessarily ones that are 'better' or 'good'.

Sure the scar on my palm is from falling off a bicycle at high speeds. A classic. I was late for work, it was raining. My father had to pick me up from the road and drop me off. Worst of all, I would have been late even if I hadn't fallen. Classic scar story.

The scar on my lip was from falling into a statue. It was shaped like an 'O', on it's side, see? I was a teenager and I climbed it and slipped and fell into the inside of the 'O'. The letter was stone and yes my lip was never the same. Stitches were needed. Because I was a teenager, I claimed I fell down a well instead. Not so classic scar story.

The scar on my pinky toe? I got a hairline fracture from crassing into my bed while reading a book. I didn't go to school the next day and couldn't have P.E. for a month. Although, like most tweens, I relished going to the library instead of being forced to change clothes with (and often in front of) other children my gender and then performing sport like activities in ill fitting gym clothes. The most annoying part was people telling me I was using crutches 'wrong'. How was I to explain that that the doctors told me I could put weight on my injured foot to my peers?

"You're walking wrong" is something I heard a lot last year when I injured my legs and essentially had to take small steps or I could fall from pain. Something as simple as regular application of Vaseline (several times a day at first, once a night today). Often people were trying to 'help' me or 'fix' me but a few did it out of spite. Honestly that hurt more that the single the last crack on my heel. Not sure if that's a better story, just different.

The scar on my arm? I fell into a cabinet. It was my arm or my head and my body wisely chose to protect my head. I wasn't even fully awake.

Nor do all scars stay, the scar on my lip is slowly healing, I used to have three scars on my hands two have since faded. The crack will heal. The scar on my arm will fade coming and going with my tan before fading Our bodies move on as our minds do but more slowly.

This idea that scars are permanent is tied to our understanding of and connotation of scars. What we think of is stories of cinematic accidents or bravery and of fighting. But what we often get instead is stories of accidents so embarrassing you laugh at them. Stories of vulnerability and of courage. Stories where the only fight was the fight to return to health, of accepting a new normal.

Maybe the shirt in the gift shop that haunts me to this day was right in it's own little way. But probably not in the way it's creators intended it.