Scars

I took a well deserved break this weekend… a break from the interwebs and the texting and the connection to all of you who reside in my phone.  Instead I focused on those who share my space in a very real way… Mom and dad are back from their snow-bird summer “vacation” up in the mountains and apparently brough cooler temperatures home with them.  The weekend was still very much full with yard work and housework and making sure that everything was in order…

It was nice to have a houseful again with the dogs and extra cats and extra humans all to cook for and spend time with.  Things had gotten a bit too quiet and that’s when my mind travels to darker places.

Today’s topic is on scars… we all have them right?  I don’t know that I know a single person who doesn’t have at least one…

I’ve got matching scars on my calves where I burned my leg on the exhaust pipe of a dirt bike as a kid… twice…

I’ve got the scar where I sliced my leg open when I was 14-ish… sliced it on the license plate of mom’s car in the garage and tried to handle it myself with band-aids for a bit because by golly, I had a date that night.  Still ended up in the ER while mom made “jokes” about how she should have just called the vet because the vet had just stitched up the leg of one of the goats who had a similar injury… it would have taken less time and would have cost less…

I’ve got the scar under my chin from that time when I was little and thought I’d be cool and do a handstand in the hot tub like you do in the pool… only my chin hit the seat and… well, you get the idea…

Those are the fun scars to talk about… the tattoos with better stories about a far gone time… a time when I was more daring and willing to try anything because no one told me I couldn’t.

Those are the scars we see… the ones that show on the outside…

But what about the other scars?

The ones caused by being strong enough to survive a difficult and dark situation but always remind me of that time…

Those are the harder scars to talk about… to face… to overcome.

The scars that tell us ugly things about who we are… or at the very least, who we once were.

The scars that hold us back from being so carefree and instead tread with extreme caution…

The scars that warn us that we might again get hurt…

Those are the scars that are harder to face…. the stories harder to share… the ones that are far more important than anything visible.

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