The place on my leg that was so angry and painful is now a thin, shiny line. It is hidden by clothes and I only see it when I choose to look. The site is numb. I am told it always will be. The nerves were severed and all that is left to remind me of that episode is the occasional sight of the little mark.
It appears I have a good number of those landmarks now. I have the places which mark my scrapes and fractures, one on my right foot, another on an elbow, a good one on my upper back, one for a removed appendix and C-section scars from the birth of two of my life's greatest blessings. I remember the "before" and I now know that the "after" was just a bookmark to signify a chapter changed, a page turned. From time to time, strange as it may sound, I actually enjoy looking at these scars -- because I can't remember the pain and all I can do is rejoice that all of that it is behind me now. Well, mostly ...
The other day, I pulled a box down off the shelf which contained a random collection of old photos. I fanned the stack of snapshots with a kind of giddy delight that I confess doesn't come along very often in my world. I saw moments frozen in time of my parents being silly -- my father, playing Monopoly with us (always winning) and doing handstands at the beach, my mother captured in one of her uncontained, unselfconscious belly laugh, my brothers in lives with little concerns, my friends, with full hearts, unscarred... And from this stack, two photographs of a long-ago me standing aside the one who broke my heart....
The dial suddenly turned back decades and I was at the place where it happened. I felt the cold, dead telephone receiver in my hand and I heard the voice turn to a dial tone. There was a shiver to my core, a vacancy ... the good-bye came with no explanation. Love was there and then it was not, plain and simple. For a moment I lingered, picking at an old scab, wondering "What did I do?" (It had to have been something I did, after all ...?) Then the doubt, "did this actually happen at all?" Then the recall: "Abandoned", "rejected", "diminished", and "unlovable" -- these, the new labels I carried around for the years to follow. All this came flooding back in a gush with the glimpse of a harmless photo.
Perspective is the gift life gives you when you get to make it this far. Blow the dust off the photograph and you will see what inexperience looks like, what life is like before mistakes and blunders. You shake your head and know that what you thought then is not the full story. And you unloose the corset that stopped your breathing long enough to forgive and let it go... and breathe again.
Funny thing happens when life moves on and the story line grows. There comes a point when you realize that what you thought would kill you doesn't. You replace the coarse threads of hurt and bitterness with gratitude for where you are today, for the strength you didn't know you had, and for the courage to face what you know will eventually mark you up even more.
You find that you touch those scars on purpose, along with all the others collected along the way. The scars are the seams to your quilt that stitch together the scraps of all the stories, the joys and the pains, the loves and losses. In time, the focus shifts from fixation upon the jagged seams to the view of brilliant colors that tell the whole story, a very, very good one in the end.
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