The Stories That Scars Tell
I was gazing at my hands today. Trying something new that my meditation teacher from Gilas Mindfulness Institute had suggested, recognizing the limits of the crash I’m in and the need for me to unburden myself where I can now that I’ve entered the last three weeks before the Miss BC Pageant.
What an interesting exercise, to carve out time to do nothing but stare at my hands. These hands that have been apart of me since birth and yet have garnered a relatively minuscule amount of my attention and focus over the course of my thirty-one years.
The more minutes elapsed, the more lines I saw. They appeared as if from nowhere. Why hadn’t I noticed them in this way before?
Countless lines, grooves, oh where did this scar from? And this scar? And this one? Tiny slivers of white amidst the brown landscape.
Thoughts flitted by as I watched. Emotions surfaced that I wouldn’t have anticipated at the onset of this practice.
Will these hands ever hold a child of my own? Will these hands ever be held by someone who can fully accept all of me - CSS included?
No more thinking about that. Just observe.
How many things have these hands touched over the course of my existence? How many places have they been? How many different textures have they felt? How many things have they enabled me to do and accomplish?
Amazement.
These scars...how funny it is that we lament blemishes on our bodily landscape. How strange to fear being scarred. Why did I ever think this was realistic for we are soft bodies moving through a rough world - why wouldn’t we bear the marks of living? Bear scars to show what we have endured and persisted past?
These marks are the stories of our life tattooed on our skin.
And I want my story to be thick with pages. I want them to say, “I have lived”.