Scars....

...we've all got them right?  And, each one has a story.  I don't know a single person that can look at their scars and not know how they got them, or when, or where.

"Oh, that scar?  Yeah, I got that one when I was 9 and trying to teach myself how to ride my bike with no hands.  It was super hot that day and I thought I could drink my water while riding.  Slammed into a Geo Metro parked at the corner of First and Beech streets.  Rolled about 12 feet on the ground and came up bleeding from both elbows and my knees.  It was awesome!"

I happen to have a scar on each wrist that I got from surgery to remove ganglion cysts when I was only 12 years old.  I have had them so long now that I usually don't even think about them.  Today, though, I happened to have noticed them for some reason and started thinking about all of the history of those scars and how so few people really even realize they are there.  There was a time when they were red and obvious and would illicit stares and uncomfortable remarks or questions.  I was only 12 but I distinctly remember being brought to tears because I overheard two grown people discussing them in whispers and wondering what happened to me that would make me slit my wrists.  Even then, I knew the more adult things to do would have been  to a) ask me about them or b) shut their pie holes.

Now that I am a mom I look at them and think about what it must have been like for my mom and dad as I was going into surgery.  It was out-patient surgery, but I was under general anesthesia and being operated on within millimeters of an artery (the reason they were being removed surgically instead of just drained of fluid with a needle).  Thinking about this, I realize, I might have the physical scars from surgery, but I know my parents have the emotional scars.  My oldest needed stitches when he was three and three years later I still choke up at the memory of that day.  He healed nicely, the scar is barely visible, but the emotional pain for me and his dad is still very much there.

I also have a c-section scar.  That scar carries very deep emotional wounds for me.  I had my heart set on an all-natural, intervention-free birth, but after 9 hours of pushing, I had to give up.  For my second labor, I tried really hard to not have a repeat c-section, but it did not work out.  I can barely see that scar, but every time I have to say the words, "I had two c-sections" I feel as if I am being stabbed right in the heart.  I deal with jealousy towards others who have "easy" births or get the VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section) they had hoped would help them heal from the trauma of their first labor and surgical delivery.  It is getting better a little all the time, but I still cry about it sometimes.

I guess the point I am trying to make, in a somewhat convoluted way, is that physical scars really are nothing.  If you feel something when you look at a scar on your body, that is the emotional connection you have to the circumstances surrounding that scar, not the scar itself.  That is what makes psychological scars so tricky to deal with.

When it comes to our emotional scars, it is sometimes hard to tell what is going to trigger a reaction, right?  It could be lyrics to a song, a scene in a movie, a phrase that someone says...anything.

And that is where I am at now.  Dealing with emotional scars that are 15 years old.  Things I never dealt with while they were happening, but are now reeling around in my brain like a bad movie.

Just when I think I have dealt with it all and the scar is fading, something happens to make it flare up and hurt all over again.  So, when will it be done?  When will the ghost of my former life leave me alone for good?