Scars

Someone pushes you. You fall. You hurt yourself. The wound is massive (or so it seems). You cry. You run home to mummy or daddy. They make it better, wipe your tears away. Put something on the wound to stop it from hurting. Oh it hurts so bad – but not so bad since mummy or daddy put something on it. They cuddle you. Watch some TV. Read you a book. You've practically forgotten about it. You go to sleep. Deep sleep. Lovely dreams. Wake up and brush your teeth. Have a bath. You feel a twinge when you step out of the bath but think nothing of it. Until mummy or daddy take the plaster off. That’s when you remember. It starts to hurt again. Why did they have to take it off? It was perfectly fine before they did and you weren’t thinking about it. But now that you can see it again, feel it again, it hurts again. Leaves a scar.

Several years later. You are playing football/dancing/at the gym. You step on it wrong and it twinges. Agony. You feel a familiar sense of frustration rising. Another session wasted because of the stupid wound caused years ago. By some stupid person who thought it was okay to push you. Fun. You roll up your clothing and see it. The scar. The stupid, ugly scar, a constant reminder of the push, the fall, the wound. Of the pain. The hurt it caused. The hurt it still causes sometimes when you turn a different way, breathe too deeply, step a foot wrong. So you breathe deeply anyway. Turn that direction anyway. Step the foot anyway. Because, really, what more can you do other can carry on, move on, do the best you can? Because despite everything, you are determined. Determined never to let the wound, the scar, the pain hold you back. Never to let it stop you from doing all the things you want to do.

Determined never to let it break you.

Wounds go away. Scars stay.