My Scar

I needed this.

This.

All of this shit.

I didn't want it, but I needed it. I've learned from it. I've bloomed from it. It took me places I had never dared to go.

It wrote a new chapter.

All over me.

It scarred me.

It will always be with me now.

This.

This scar, this lesson, this experience.

These feelings, these thoughts, these insecurities.

This fear.

I didn't ask for it, hell I even tried to avoid it, but I needed it. It evolved me into something...else. I was inertia in human form and this, all this shit, was needed. It cost, but I earned stuff out of it. It broke my heart but it jump-started my brain.

I have a big ugly scar. It used to be big and swollen and sore and red. Touching it hurt. Touching it alone would make it burst and hot red blood would shoot out, running down on my skin. Eventually it got smaller. I had to scratch it to get the blood out. And smaller and smaller it became with time, the redness of it gradually fading away into the pale pinkish color of normal skin.

At first it scared me. I hated that scar but it also gave me comfort knowing it was there. Touching it, feeling it, hurting it, scratching and bursting it open gave me comfort. When it started getting smaller, I panicked. What would I do without my scar? What would life be without my scar? It couldn't be the same. And although it wasn't making me happy, I didn't like it, I had gotten used to it as part of myself.

And then one day my scar couldn't be called that anymore; it had gotten so small, so tiny, so...healed almost. I didn't know what to do. There was new skin, pretty undamaged skin and my scar was nothing but a teeny tiny dot; you probably wouldn't even know it was there.

And I started scratching. Then harder. And then even harder yet. Then I got a pencil. Stuck it through my newly healed flesh, to get it out, come on, there has to be blood in there come on let it rush out.

Nothing.

I dash to the kitchen, violently open the drawer and grab a knife. I look at my reflection in it. It almost brings the sense back to me.

What the hell am I doing?

Why am I so compelled to dig out a bloody hole in me again?

And who can guarantee me that there is any blood left to come out of that hole?

I go back to bed. Get under the warm covers and curl up in a small ball.

Your lips on my shoulder almost scare the hell out of me.

You turn me over and put me in your arms, kissing my forehead as I rest my head in your neck and my arm on your chest.

That comfortable silence,

Your fingers go up and down my arm, that intimate familiar gesture I always loved about you.

You stop. Your finger resting on my scar.

You feel it.

You can feel it.

You know it's there.

"Where did you get this from?" you ask me.

And I feel like barging into the kitchen, grabbing that knife and sticking it into your heart.

Don't. Ask. Me. About. That.

You. Don't. Ask. Me. About. That.

And while I'm staring into the nothingness of the dark room, motionless, maybe emotionless even, I cannot think of a decent answer to give you that will not break your comfort. Your serenity. Your bubble. Your ego.

Your heart.

"Leave it alone" I eventually say. "It happened a long time ago."

And it has your name written all over it.