Scars

Wounded

A bruise is tender

but it does not last,

it leaves me as

I always was.

But a wound I take

much more to heart,

for a scar will always

leave its mark.

And if you should ask me

which you are,

my answer is-

you are my scar.

~Lang Leav

I recently found this poem and it has just stuck with me. I actually made it my background on my tablet so that I see it everyday. It serves to remind me that no matter what we do people are going to scar us. As I said in my earlier post people leave us all the time; there is not one person who is going to stay in your life forever. Some times when they leave they bruise you in the process. These are the people that it hurts to see go but you get over it. They don't shake your world as they make their exit. Other people cut you as they go leaving behind a scar that never truly fades away. These are the people that you invested deeply in, they are the person you called late at night when you felt alone, the one who knows your fears and dreams. This is someone that you loved. This is your best friend who decided that they wanted to move on, the person you thought you'd be with forever, a parent that dies or leaves. They each held a part of your life and a part of your heart and they take it with them as they go. They become the memories that are bittersweet to remember. People like this are impossible to avoid. There will come a time that we trust the wrong people or that fall in love with people that don't love us back or just love people in general. No matter how much you think that you can close yourself off to others, there is always going to be that one person that you let in. For most of my life I have been afraid of these scars because they hurt. I tried to hide from the world, avoided letting people know what was going on inside of my head, how I felt. But I couldn't keep everyone out, there have been people who have made it into my heart and many of them have given me the scars that I had always feared. But the thing is that we shouldn't be afraid of the scars. Scars mean that we have lived. Yes, scars hurt, it hurts to lose people but they also tell a story. Think about the physical scars that we have. They hurt when we got them but they also hold memories for us painful as they may have been. They are stories of what we have been through, what we have done, the type of people we are. Same goes for the scars that we receive from other people. These scars show that you loved, that you cared, that you are a person. They remind us of mistakes we made and of good times that we had. When they are healing sometimes it can be painful but after it heals it can become something beautiful. Scars are important. They are teaching tools and reminders of what we have been through and who we are. Inside of hiding our scars and shutting the world out we need to look at them with love and remember the good that came from the people that gave them to us. People will come and go, they will bruise or scar and we need to accept that this is the way of life instead of hiding from it. I try to no longer hide from my scars, they make me who I am today. Instead I try to embrace them as a part of me. I try not to hide from people in fear of being hurt, I try to just love unconditional, let people in to see my scars because I am my scars and my scars are me.