I’m not sure why I started each post of this here challenge by telling you what my letter is not for, but it’s tradition now, so I guess I’ll have to continue. My S is not for space-monkeys. My writerly pal Gareth S. Young said I could not write about them, because he called it first. I don’t even know what a space-monkey is, tho it’s presumably a regular monkey wearing a space helmet. And he did not specify if the space-monkey I should not be writing about is a rhesus monkey or a chimpanzee (which is technically not a monkey, but an ape). After all, there are lots of different kinds of monkeys, including capuchin and spider and colobus. And should I not be writing about the actual monkeys who have gone into space? Guster told me I couldn’t, so obviously I won’t. Nope, not at all.

I also won’t be writing about scents, tho my favorite is honeysuckle – real honeysuckle, growing on a vine, not the kind humans try to bottle; or the suggestion secrets of the soul, because that should probably be a book of poetry. It sounds like something Francis Quarles would have written (the dude I featured in my “Q” post), only he would have called it Secrefs of Ye Olde Doomed Soule, I’m guessing.

Instead:

S is for Scars

There’s a book called Your Scars Are Beautiful to God. I haven’t read the book, and in fact, know very little about it, but the title resonates with me.

If you’ve lived any amount of time on this planet, then chances are you’ve been scarred in some way. The easy ones to recognize are the ones on our skin, the ones visible to the outside world. I have a notch in my forehead from when I fell off a porch when I was four years old, and a line that cuts into my left eyebrow from when my dog pulled me into the house last January. I have a half-moon shaped scar on the index finger of my right hand, a war wound I acquired while working at the Winn-Dixie deli during my college days. I was cleaning the slicer, and, well, sliced my finger open. Then there are scars on my belly from a couple of surgeries. Small, healed incisions that look like a constellation, as a friend told me when she saw them.

And of course, there are scars that are harder, if not impossible, to see. The ones I carry from my abusive childhood. The ones my father carries from his abusive childhood.

There are wounds I’ve gotten from losses, large and small; and ones I’ve given myself, however inadvertently. Every time I make a mistake, I tend to call myself “stupid” or the like, which is damaging and not helpful. I’ve told myself stories that are patently untrue, even if at the time they seemed very real and accurate, and even tho they helped me cope, most have caused me more pain in the long run. I often feel insecure, and that I’m a fraud, and that perhaps I don’t deserve all the good things I have.

My internal scars (and my biological and chemical makeup and my genes) have created mental issues that most times are hidden: I suffer from anxiety and depression, both of which lead to insomnia. (And it’s amazing how much crazier I feel when I can’t get enough sleep.) I doubt anyone looking at me would know I fight those demon triplets, but I do.

Some of my wounds have healed and I have moved on, while others are raw and oozing. And some feel healed, absorbed into my marrow, until something happens that makes me pick at them all over again.

dSavannah note: for some reason I’ve had a very hard time writing about this. I’ve typed and erased, typed and erased; stared and pondered; thought about ditching the whole topic and starting over… But part of my ‘mission’ in writing this blog is to stare at the dark places, and tell them they have no hold over me. My scars are part of who I am; without those experiences, without those wounds, I wouldn’t be me.

Just like regrets, the important thing is to learn from the experience and not ‘sit in the puddle’, as my fan Elaine so eloquently put it.

So, I guess we’ll just have to remember: our scars are beautiful, just like we are.