There are so many kinds of scar tissue, y’all don’t even know. You have problems asking me how I got a scar on my cheek or my neck or my wrist or my leg for fear of bringing up a stressful physical injury. Or perhaps you’re hesitant to bring attention to a defect on the persona visible to your eyes.

Yet you quickly ask why I hesitate in certain subjects. Why I hold back from over-personal shows of affection from people I just met who most definitely are not yet allowed within my inner circle.

Why I raise my eyebrow and slightly lean back when my personal space is invaded…

All of this is purely hypothetical, written to YOU as in a general person. If you feel deliberately targeted, perhaps your perception is telling yourself of an action you feel guilty of, whether you did it or not.

I feel we all need to turn the microscopes on ourselves more often than we do on others.

Back to scar tissue. There are many stages of healing: fresh wounds with stitches that itch and burn and keep one up at night; raised skin that’s red and still itchy but the stitches are gone yet the owner constantly worries of ripping it open again; puckered pinkish skin rimmed in white that aches instead of itches; whitish skin that’s still raised and bumpy but rarely twinges; paler skin that’s barely raised anymore and rarely tugs on the memory; and maybe finally the smooth skin with a slight pale demarcation that’s indicates at one time, this place was not whole.

As you may have noticed, I am more than intimately familiar with injuries that cause scars that cause recovery time that cause healing.

To someone more dear to my heart than I’ve ever told her, worry not Mother. I am healed. I have been for a very long time. You constantly speak of lancing the wound, cleansing it, in order to heal.

But one doesn’t lance a wound no longer there.

My posting this history of mine is not a surgery for me. It’s not me lancing my wound so it can finally close and heal. It is me sharing freely, openly, so that anyone stuck in the infection of shame or anger or hate might follow in my footsteps.

As anyone may casually explain an old scar visible to anyone, I say “Oh, that old thing? It happened so long ago I hardly give it a moment’s thought anymore…” And I would be telling the truth.

Sharing is caring, and I’m sharing my story not because I need healing, but because someone else might need help in their recovery.

There are many scars worthy of bragging. A warrior’s scars denoting their prowess in battle. A mother’s scars telling the story of her body stretching and breaking then healing all for the little life they held and still hold and protect, to this day. An old farmer’s hands, missing a joint and criss-crossed with wounds from ages ago that speak of hard work and labor. These visible markers of trials and tribulations faced and overcome. They are markers of pride and strength, of surviving.

Just because one cannot SEE the scars, does not mean they don’t exist. And sometimes the invisible scars speak of nearly insurmountable odds that were defeated, making their owners that much more of a warrior.

I battled once. I won. And now, after many years, I realize that I won the right to say I AM A WARRIOR. I EARNED MY SCARS. AND I’M PROUD OF THEM.