Scab

For the last three days (the whole last week really) I told myself I'd go into Boston, undergo an adventure. "Tomorrow I'll go" was my daily excuse. So, looking over my week in preparation for blog-writing I decided to give myself the rest of my day, on the off-chance that something would happen. Well, walking back home I realized that stuff had been going on this week, subtle stuff. Without a thought on my part, life was taking place.
A week or two ago I fell. Nothing terrible, just embarrassing. Skinned a small bit of one knee, but mostly got about a quarter-size scab on the right part of my hand, right above the wrist. For a few hours it just bled. Nothing knows red like blood. The substance of blood, the taste (the copper taste of a penny), a "no-excuses" purity. It is blood, take that. Anyways, I put on a band-aid (delicately administered by Elizabeth), and went on with life. Well, sort off. I like to peek at my injury's, lift a corner of the band-aid, keep constant track of how it's fairing, what stage of the development it is at.
As a kid, I was constantly covered in scrapes, scabs, and bruises. Trees were meant to be climbed, fences squeezed through, and new locations meant new explorations.
Sidenote-my parents called me a "bull in a china shop", I would frown, and take the compliment, hearing "a bowl in a china shop". Apparently I was delicate, not discombumerated (my mother's version of "discombobulated" and my childhood middle name). To be honest, I loved the array of war-scars. Well, "scars" is misleading, none of them stayed. And as I grew up, I grew out of injuries, so that now it is rare to see me injured in any way. I live cautiously.
Anyways, this last weeks scrape soon became a scab, and a rather gruesome one, so that, once the bandage was off, many people would catch sight, return for a second look and then ask what had happened. It looked like my skin was festering. (I don't actually know exactly what "festering" means, but it remains one my favorite and frequently-used words...) It was a delight to watch.
Well, walking towards home I once again began touching the skin. Last night I discovered that, besides a rough barrier between old skin and new, the new skin that had replaced the scab was incredibly smooth. It looked cleaner, felt younger. I am better now, having fallen, than before I fell. I have this patch of crisp skin. My body took care of me, figured things out.
It got me thinking. Sometimes things need to get worse before they get well again, that much I knew. I guess I hadn't realized that, rather than "getting well again", things end up better, once you've been hurt. Maybe it's not a rule, but it's a possibility. Life gets ugly sometimes, and the ugly part is still you, you're the cause of your problem. But given time, it'll clean itself up, with effort. And sometimes, it can seem like nothing is happening, but all that nothing time is accompanied by healing, undercover healing.
I like the word 'healing'. It reminds of meditating, and finding peace with yourself. Because, sure, there is a mad world around us, but a person's relationship with the world has to always come second to their relationship with themselves. Sometimes it's terrifying, looking down at the bleeding or the scab, sometimes it is beautiful and fascinating. It can be worse, when you let yourself realize that it is you, the ugly is a part of you.
I live most of my life afraid of getting hurt, Rachel once said I choose to live on extremes. I see the options of giving (either a person or a situation) my everything (time, thoughts, love, hate...), or retreating and leaving nothing. At the first hint that I can't trust a person, or that they are interpreting me 'wrong', I disapear. "I am a whisper, I'm the wind. Arms aren't meant to hold me." So, for nearly a year now, I have been trying to reprogram my brain into realizing that it is okay to get hurt, it's good for me.

"Living is trusting that THIS isn't the moment that you will die.
Relationships are formed when you TRUST that they don't WANT (plan) to hurt you.

THIS=NOW
LIVE NOW

LOVE may not LAST. Little does.
That's no reason to avoid it.
CAUTION is always laced
(sometimes reasonably)
with FEAR." (8/12/09)