Scar Tissue
Right now, I am taking a Creative Nonfiction course, and it has caused me to put an analogy to what I’ve been trying to do with my yearly blogathon entries, my 24-hour comics, and my writing in general, so without further ado, let me go on about that at length for a bit.
As a simple fact of being people (and now my brain is firmly in Soylent Green) we get banged around, scraped up, scarred. Physically yes, but also emotionally. The damage inflicted on us, the damage inflicted by us … it all takes its toll. The bangs, scrapes, and scars on my psyche are something that I’ve pretended to be healed from for the past 10+ years of my life. Somehow, I’ve expected myself to have some superhuman ability to heal without any mental equivalent of antibiotic ointment or even a Snoopy band-aid. Ridiculous, really.
Until very recently, I would save up all my pain for 24-hour comic day, then pour it out on the page in bad drawings and snarky dialogue. Until recently, I really thought that was enough because I’ve been convincing myself that it HAD to be enough.
Cut to the present, where my mental and emotional scars are becoming increasingly more visible. Not just to myself, but to others. To my distaste and horror, people can now tell that I am not fine when they talk to me. They can tell I am holding back. And to hold back any longer makes me feel like a hypocrite and a fool.
This weekend, I decided to do a bit of surgery on this calcified scar tissue around my metaphorical heart. They say to write well is simple, all you have to do is bleed on the page. The problem with bleeding on the page is it can just make more scars when you open that vein, but if you choose an existing scar, and with precision, cut around it … well, if you really use the whole thing. Really get it out on the page, I mean … the new scar will be smaller, cleaner, a badge of your history and not a blight on your soul.
I think I managed that this weekend. No, I am not over everything that happened. No, I don’t expect I’ll ever be 100% over anything. But the scar from those events are now smaller, lighter in color, and something I can look at and realize that the imperfections of my past help make me who I am.
Now that I’ve once again run an analogy into the ground, I’ll say this:
No matter our scars, we are not marred by them unless we try to cover them with a bad layer of cosmetic “okayness”.
I am not fine, but I am not broken.