Textured

"The past becomes a texture, an ambience to our present."
-Paul Scott

I have a small scar on my left thumb.

I got it when I was a kid.

I don't remember how.

I was so young when it happened, 

I don't remember my thumb without the scar.

Sometimes I rub it with my other thumb, absentmindedly,

it's just a thing I do for comfort.

I have a bigger scar on my forehead.

I was riding the school bus

and some kids were throwing wads of paper at each other.

The kid behind me threw one hard towards the front of the bus

and caught my forehead with his thumbnail.

It bled like crazy.

He freaked out.

No one threw paper on the bus anymore that year.

The biggest scars I have are not on my skin.

You can't run your finger over them and feel their bumps.

You can't see the scars, but they are there just the same.

I remember how I got some of them.

Others have always been with me.

I wouldn't be the same person without them.

For good or for bad, the scars I have make me the person I am.

My thumb is unrecognizable without its scar.

But I don't even remember how it happened.

Surely it hurt, but I don't remember the pain, so did the pain exist?

It isn't a painful scar, it just is.

It makes my thumb, my thumb.

My life would be unrecognizable without the things that have scarred the inside of me.

Some of my scars hurt me still, years later.

But some are like the scar on my thumb..

they just make me, me.

Losing someone you love scars you.

I think it scars you the most.

But it becomes, almost, a favorite scar.

If the love wasn't there, the scar wouldn't be either.

But because the love was there, you sort of rub your finger over the scar of your loss.

Only it's not the bump of the scar you're feeling for, but the feel of the love that caused it.

You brush against it for comfort, because while there was pain, it means there was love.

And you miss the love and you only want to feel it again.

Even if it's just for a minute.