I cut my finger today doing something generally stupid. It wasn't a bad cut or anything, but it's in the perfect place to be a constant reminder of my foolishness for the next several days. Looking down at my hands and arms I noticed all kind of various scars that crisscross their way over my skin. For some of the scars I can remember what caused them. For others the memory has faded almost as much as the scar has. Still it's like a visual record of my life's physical traumas, even if they only resulted in the smallest of imprint. The thing is I know I've been hurt more often than I have scars to prove. So why is it that only a select few...I was going to say make the cut. Now I know that physically speaking there is a very good reason why certain injuries leave a mark while others leave no trace. Maybe it's something more though. Maybe it's our body's way of remembering something in a physical way so that we can try our best to avoid having it happen again.
If you're a drinker then there's probably a time you can remember when you had a little too much fun and made yourself sick. It could be strawberry margaritas or just plain light beer, there was that one time you had too much of it and wish you hadn't. Of course by the time you figured this out it was already too late. The memory of that lesson may to this day still bring a slight shudder as you look back on it. While you can't see it, wouldn't that also be just another scar? Maybe somewhere in our brain there is a physical marker that indicates where the memory lives. Other memories from that same time period may have long since drifted away, but that one stays with you because of the pain associated with. It could be that pain retains.
There are plenty of people out there who have experienced something so traumatizing that they can't just walk away from it. I used to wonder why people couldn't simply get over it. I mean it happened and was horrible, but why dwell on it? Why couldn't they just get past it and move on with their lives? Wouldn't they be happier if they let go of that pain? The thing I didn't understand was that the mental scarring is so much that it won't simply heal on its own. At least not anytime soon. It would be like trying to run a marathon on a broken leg and wondering why each step hurts. Now granted there are some people who prefer to wallow in their own misery. It's strangely comforting to them for some reason. Others though want to heal, but just can't. If your tooth was hurting the smart thing to do would be to go see a dentist. They're trained to work on teeth that hurt. So if your mind is hurting why would anyone think about trying to fix it themselves? Sure you may be mentally strong, but that might not be enough to heal those scars. When I cut my finger today I could have wished it to stop bleeding through sheer willpower. The smarter thing to do was to take action and stop it myself. There's only so much I can do at this point though. I don't know if it will become yet another scar. Maybe all scars are just lessons we couldn't learn without a physical reminder of our own frailty. Then again maybe they're reminders of our ability to recover from nearly anything and be stronger for it, if only for the fact that the next time that situation comes around we know we can survive it.
