Scars....

I have my scars and of course, just like with any other scar, they have their own story. From childhood to present, I sport quite a few many all over the place. The one on my chin when I tripped and fell onto a boulder and arrested the fall cleverly with my chin and split it open... The nick on my upper lip from when I was misusing  a screwdriver and it slipped and I accidentally stabbed myself in the face with it... The one across the bridge of my nose when I cleverly hindering gravity with my face on a downed tree... The burn on my arm from splashing up hot oil when I dropped chicken into the hot pan of oil... The one on my arm from getting into a fight with a cat and losing... A lot... I've got tons! And most come with some rather amusing anecdote and post scripts....

The various scrapes, cuts and gashes on my knees and legs from various sports and just walking and crashing into things... The cuts on my head from various head injuries... Appendicitis and the subsequent surgery... My hands are pretty scraped up as are me feet. My face, my back, my front, my sides. I don't think I have a body part that doesn't have a scar of sorts... Seriously. I fall. A LOT.

The one that generally gives me pause is the one at my throat. Two slashes across from ear to ear from a stalker who threatened me. He had used the spine of the blade and although I suffered cuts, they weren't deep enough to cause serious damage. For the longest time, the physical scars weren't the only things that were left. I was damaged on the inside too. I lived with a lot of fear for a very long time.
I suppose those are the scars that leave the most lasting impressions. Yes, eventually I got over the psychological scars and the physical ones have faded quite a bit over the years... :sigh: But quite honestly, the whole experience has helped to shape the person that I became. Both inside and out.

I know that I will keep collecting scars. I fall, I trip, I crash into things (all of them even when I'm standing still... I'm just THAT talented...) But there are those scars where people do learn a lot about themselves in retrospection about the moment, hopefully helping one to become more aware of where they went wrong and can do all in their power to correct it. Do over. Second chance. I can't tell you where a some of my scars come from, others of them I can. Both the physical ones and the emotional ones. But I do know that I have learned a lot about myself as I walked down memory lane going through the events of how the initial "injury" that led to the scars came to be and where I went wrong. I learned about not making the same mistakes (for the most part... I can't help being a spaz...) by taking the measures to learn from my mistakes. I learned about better ways of coping and dealing with all manner of situations and taking responsibilities for the things I "own" and dropping the other bags of crap and fixing my own shit. And I learned that eventually, no matter what the cause of "injury", I heal. And that eventually, scars start to fade. Even though they leave a "lasting impression", I see it as a "characteristic" rather than a flaw. A learning experience that shaped me into the person that I am. And as I go through life, old and new scars, will shape the person I will become.
Still a long path, but it's good. It feels good.