29062011

Scars.

As I was peeling the skin off my back (yes, my back looks absolutely horrid now) I thought of writing something here tonight. Seeing the skin peel off from my bare back with a few bloody red lines running along it, too. I had no idea where those red lines had come from but they had healed already. Only scars were left.

My first mature text in high school, or at least I like to think it was my first mature text, was titled Scars. The topic was easily the hardest out of the topics the students could choose and I wanted to challenge myself. I knew the topic would mean relating the context of the essay into my actual life because physical scars are nearly impossible to write about if you have never had ones that you would carry for the rest of your life, with a story added to them. So, I went on a fairly personal level in the essay and I remember how good it felt to write about something personal, something that had hurt me. When I wrote the essay, it hadn't been even two years from the events that have scarred me for life. There are stories I could add to those scars but they are not physical, not visible for the human eye. The whip of youth has been cracked on my back multiple times and shedding my skin has never helped. The scars remain.

But are scars a bad thing? Don't scars mean that the wound has healed? I like to think so. The wound is not bleeding anymore and if left alone, it will eventually heal completely. So why do we need to talk about things that are in our past? Why do we feel the need to cut open our scars and let them bleed once again? Will they heal quicker after they have been opened once? Will the wound infest inside if not opened after it has turned into a scar?

All these precious questions, all these precious scars. Here I am. The same person who wrote his first mature text what seems like ages ago. The same person who held on to the wooden pole of sanity when his young mind was was slashed into wounds from the cracks of a whip that ceased to exist.

.you are so perfect when you cry.