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SCAR STUDDED LIFE
mood: 
contemplative
contemplativemusic: A Boy Named Goo
Listening to some music, I heard the Goo Goo Dolls belt out this song lyric and it made me think. Nothing speaks to me of intimacy more than what I carry with me everywhere – my body. Specifically, I am referring to the map that we carry with us, our scars. Sometimes scars aren’t visible to the casual observer but we know where they are. We can all trace a finger over some old scar and tell the story like it happened yesterday.
I have two such scars on my face. They greet me every morning when I look in the mirror. One of my earliest childhood memories, from when I was about 2 years old, was of spending several days upstairs at my day care away from all the other children. The reason behind this exile, and the resulting two scars, was the common childhood disease, chicken pox. Of course, the scars have faded over the years but the memory has not. The small dash over my right eye serves as a balance to my left eyebrow when it arches in surprise. The other scar is smaller but strategically placed on the bridge of my nose. The little half-circle scar is highlighted when I sunburn and people have noticed it. Most of the time, though, it rests in obscurity among some freckles but I know it is there. I see them for what they are, part of the terrain of my memories.
Another stop along my body map is the underside of my chin. I received six stitches from a fall on the playground when I was 5. Jennifer Snow, my arch nemesis of the playground, wanted to play with my Holly Hobby purse. Naturally, I was adamantly against it. Jennifer, nonplused by my refusal, snatched the purse from me and made a mad dash across the playground. I followed at an equally frenzied pace. As you might have guessed, my energetic pursuit was a haphazard one. I tripped over the edge of the sandbox and fell to the ground, splitting open my chin. To this day when I exert myself, I feel a tingle in my chin. If exertion leads to an asthma attack, my chin scar itches like fire. I can’t explain the correlation, it just happens. In this way, I am constantly reminded of a particular moment in my past by the scar it left behind.
Further down my body and a forward leap in chronology, I come to a pale, almost invisible scar on my left leg. This scar’s landscape consists of an indentation about the size of my fingertip and a blue-green hue. At age16, when I noticed the small scrape I had from who-knows-where changed into a raised bump, I wasn’t concerned. Being young and basically healthy, concern didn’t set in until I noticed a few months later that the bump had doubled in size. The panic meter shot up, so I went directly to source of all comfort, my mother. She immediately made an appointment with a skin doctor. My mind entertained ideas about cancer, leg amputations and death. By the day of the appointment, I was completely convinced that my bump was the only the beginning of a terrible fate. As luck would have it, after a biopsy and two stitches, the bump turned out to be just a lump of scar tissue. Only the vague outline of this tiny culprit remains, just enough to make me reminisce every time I put on lotion or shave my legs.
Next stop along the living atlas of my life is at the end, literally. My left foot is blessed with bit of my topographical history. The year was 1991; I was newly graduated from high school and a bit of a wild child. Some friends and I were at a concert of the then local group, Marilyn Manson. I was in the front row, standing directly in front of the lead singer (my usual position) when a mosh-pit escapee came sailing over my head. Marilyn, known to the regulars as Brian back then, ducked to avoid a Doc Martin boot to the head. Marilyn’s microphone stand smacked me in the head and hit the guy next to me. The collision knocked the beer out of his hand, sending said beer crashing to the floor. Pieces of broken bottle and warm, frothy beer washed over my shoes, lodging bits of glass between my toes. The sight of my blood mixed with beer sent me screaming to the bathroom. It was only a few minutes later that I saw the blood running down my check from my apparent head wound. Marilyn’s girlfriend witnessed what had happened and rushed in to the club’s bathroom where I was desperately trying to clean my foot in the dingy bathroom sink. I was able to milk my injury for a free band t-shirt that has since been banished to the back of my closet by my more respectable clothes. The memory of that day is not banished, though, I am left with a scar between my toes that I am convinced still retains a tiny shard of glass.
As time moves forward, I’m sure that my body map will change. New experiences will make new signpost, and I will have a story to accompany each one. When I become a mother, I’m sure I will register in my mind each little mile marker along my child’s path of scars and the tradition will continue. My intimate relationship with my scars is a part of how I define myself. I am reminded of past experiences and, in a very visual way, reminded of their consequences. That is why the song lyric “Scars are souvenirs you’ll never loose, the past is never far” inspired me to reflect on my souvenirs. The past isn’t far; it is with you as long as you inhabit your body.
sad
cranky
giddy