The Scars I Wish You Saw

Senior+Delaney+Watson+tells+the+stories+behind+her+scars.

Senior Delaney Watson tells the stories behind her scars.

I’m not a careful person, but I’m not a careless person. Anyone can look down at my legs and arms that are decorated with bruises and scars and gashes, and tell that I have been through a lot. Every little mark on my worn in skin has been custom tailored to tell a small story, which is part of a larger story– the story of me.

I have a wonky-lined oval on my left shin and a smaller sister scar on my knee. These scars tell the story of a family vacation gone wrong.

The spring break of fifth grade when my family went to North Carolina was probably the last vacation we all took before my parents got divorced. We were there to visit my uncle, aunt, and two cousins. On our last day of vacation, my cousins, brother, and I decided to take a leisurely stroll through a nearby park. In an attempt to hide from my cousin, John, his brother Owen lead us to a safe haven. The only problem was that we had to cross a creek to get there. In one swift motion, Owen hopped on a rock and made it to the other side. Next, it was my turn.

What happened next is still a little fuzzy to this day.

I slipped on the rock and I plummeted down to the bottom of the creek.  I must have nicked my leg and knee on the way down because I emerged from the swampy creek water with blood running down my leg. Upon seeing my lacerations, my dad rushed me to the nearest Emergency Room. My partially numb gashes received five stitches– four on the shin and one on the knee. Four hours later, we had to catch a flight back home to Chicago despite how immobile my injuries made me.

At the time it was horrific, but looking back now it’s a really interesting story to tell, and my scars are the souvenirs that tell the story.

I have a large surface-level scar on my left knee that commemorates my sixteenth birthday.

To understand this particular occurrence, I must disclose that I have always been a kid at heart. My childish ways include riding around on the scooter that I have had since my tenth birthday. In honor of my sixteenth year, I took a bit of a victory lap around the block on my scooter.

As I began to see the rooftop of my house peek through the gray clouds, my scooter hit a bump and I went flying off. I arrived home with blood soaked jeans and palms peppered with pebbles. The gash on my knee was surface level, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, but no one could believe how a sixteen year-old could manage to get hurt like an eight year-old. My scar still remains to remind me and whoever looks at it that I am permanently eight years old.    

We all come into this world as blank canvases yet to be touched by the hands of the world.

This plays into the appeal of tattoos; people want proof that they have lived. Tattoos serve the same purpose of pictures in a scrapbook– they tell the stories of someone’s life. I view all of my bruises and scars and gashes in the same way– they tell my story. Years of scar cream and playing it safe really showed me that that is not how I want to live.

I want to run and jump and get hurt, and I want proof of that.

At one point, I felt that my blemishes were shameful imperfections, but now I know that my imperfections are who I am. I am an imperfect person surrounded by imperfect people in an imperfect world. There’s imperfection in everything– the cracks in a sidewalk, the flickering of a light, the heavy storm clouds– but I have learned to see beauty in these imperfections.