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“I think the concept of cutting starts with that [visual cue]. You have this inexplicable, intangible pain that no one else can see, which people rarely believe is true even if you do muster up the courage to tell them. But we are visual beings. We don't believe until we see. So when I was in pain, the compulsion would come over me to physically see it. To prove to myself that it was real, that I wasn't making it up. A scar means you've been through something. “It was also a question of power, of control. When everything was falling apart and going to shit, I could control at least one aspect of my pain: the physical part. And I had a scar to prove it afterwards. Every scar tells a story. My scars speak volumes of the language-less pain of sorrow, abandonment, aching confusion. There was a lot of teenage angst mixed up in there too, for sure, but our souls are so much more complex than simply the immediate. Sometimes I felt as if my soul was so big it was bursting out the pores of my skin, and my love and hatred were so sharp that it left traces of peeled-back skin and droplets of blood when it left me.” Jane and I each carry a lifetime’s worth of scars. Everybody does – physically, emotionally, spiritually, and so on. They are the raised proof that whatever does not kill you has the potential to make you stronger. Each wound we obtain is a tiny battle. When you fell off your bike and scraped your knee, that was a battle. When that cute girl called you a loser in high school, that was a battle too. And if you gave up on bicycles and cute girls as a result, then those were battles that you lost, and the adjoining scars will forever remind you. Together, Jane and I were able to create a maxim that worked for both of our ideologies: “Wounds for the weary. Scars for the strong. Time for the kind that do not yet belong.” Get back on the bike and keep riding. Go back over and win the girl’s affections. Own your life. Own your scars. Remember them as choices, not by-products. Peace.
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