I have looked at my scars and said “wow, that healed well.” I’m forever fascinated by how exceptionally well the human body can recover from being cut or even torn severely by one external force or another. Some times you see by the different pigmentation on a person’s skin that something injured them once. You see by the shape or the size of the light faded scar or differently formed new skin how deep the cut or the tear was.
I have a burn scar on my left hand from when I was about 6, the skin is slightly darker and draws a tiny cirlce. On my right hand I have a bump which was formed as I healed from a splinter that pierced me and wasn’t all removed because I would not allow anyone to touch me, it was too painful to a 13year old. On one of my left calf I have a slight ridge, if I can call it that, it was a bicycle injury that 11year old me had. The cut was deep as some sharp metal pierced me open when I fell from my bike. All these scars came with a very painful sensation that lasted for days on end and weeks for other scars which I may or may not have. I was a serious tomboy; so you can imagine climbing trees and all sorts of things that can scar a child. The scars were painful when they occured, they took time to heal and they changed the appearance of my skin. I remember these moments because most of my scars came with a lesson; some even helped me build character. When I fell off my bike I didn’t just quit, I took time out and my mother dressed my wound; after that I went back limping to get on to the same bike that had just torn me throught the white tissue which is safely hidden by the epidermis. I learn’t that nothing is easy and if you want to achieve something, you give it your all. A lesson I know and understand still. How scars tell stories.
Some stories are sad; we have scars that occured at knife point or gun point.Some occured when we were running or fighting for our lives. Some occured at the same time and place where we lost our loved ones. These moments are stamped on to our minds and become imprinted on to our memories. These are not just physical scars; they are accompanied by emotional scaring and psychological scaring. Scars such as these may in some rare 0.0001% case contain a lesson. They are more than 100% without lesson but they change our lives drastically. Even in these instances the human body recovers. The skin tone changes or not. The appearance of the skin may or may not be affected. The skin is restored over time and so are our emotions. We some come out different. We learn to live life again, we learn to smile and enjoy living again but psychologically, we have changed. We are no longer the same people we were before that moment when the scar occured. Something about our outlook on life changes. The scar serves as a reminder of what we went through. Some try to avoid a similar circumstance as much as possible. Some start campaigns and organisations related to what they went through. Some become activist. Some come out stronger: some come out weaker. It’s our human nature; something that breaks you physically, emotionally and psychologically is bound to change you in one way or another. Nevertheless; life goes on inour new transformed state. Just as
the skin some times never regains its original form, our pschological state never regains its original form. It is altered forever, positively or negatively; we choose our paths.
As much as we choose between positive and negative, there are choices we never get to make ourselves. These cause serious emotional scars in most cases. When an emotional scar occurs simaltaniously with a physical scar, you are more prone to heal than when an emotional scar occurs without any other accopaying. I am a believer in constructive criticism; some times it may hurt your feelings that not everyone sees what you see but the fact that your psychological state is being challenged and transformed by the criticism makes your hurt feelings worth it. The fact that my 6year old self leart never to come too close to a heater was well worth being angry at the hearter. There is an understanding of the scar hence we can recover and move on.
