Scarring

When I was in eighth grade, I had a friend group pretty stereotypical of eighth grade girls. Catty, backstabbing, dramatic--all the usual things girls do when they're trying to assert their identities, or just being pre-teens. Since my high school was still struggling with the women's movement, in junior high both boys and girls were required to take home economics, but no one was required to take a shop class. I liked to sit on top of the tables and do my hand sewing with my friends, and one day a struggle erupted over a pair of scissors that two of us needed at once.

She grabbed the handles, and I grabbed the blades. Playfully, she started opening and closing the scissors, trying to get me to let go. The base of my index finger got caught in the blades, and I lost a sizeable chunk of skin. I went to the office and got taped up, and wasn't worried about it until I got home later that day and noticed that it was still bleeding profusely.

I'd lost too much skin over too shallow an area for stitches; stitches also would have severely compromised my dexterity, and at the time I considered myself a serious musician. They slapped some awesome insta-clotting stuff on it (I wish I'd asked the name) and the bleeding stopped nearly instantly. In a few weeks, the artifical scab dropped off, but for about a month after that, I'd get pain when I'd flex my hand--it felt like I'd ripped it open all over again, on the inside.

***

Not last week but the week before, I was out with a group of friends to celebrate a birthday. We'd all gone to Lolita's, and I was having such a good time that when I checked my phone and saw I'd missed two calls from R's younger brother (in town for the party that R was attending) I assumed he was drunk and left it at that. While I was holding the phone, it began to ring again, this time with the number of R's little. I picked up.

"Don't worry," he says. "Everything's fine," he says. "He's in the ER, he'll just need a stitch or two and he'll be out soon." Further inquiry yielded the information that R, too drunk to stand, had hit his head on either a doorframe or the floor hard enough to need stitches. But I didn't need to leave, everything was under control. For once--I didn't leave. I left my boyfriend in other people's hands.

Of course, that didn't stop me from heading straight to the ER when I got home at 2 in the morning to find a still drunk R, covered in blood, holding gauze to his head, grinning ear-to-ear to see me all dressed up. He pulled the gauze away to let me see--he'd cut himself down to his skull, not a hard thing to do on your forehead, but still. I came back to sit with him while they cleaned his gash and gave him stitches. I asked to watch while they sewed him up, thinking this is a good thing to see, possibly future doctor. The nice ER guy numbed him up using lydocaine, telling me where it could and could not go: fingers, nose, toes, and hose. Stitches one, two, and three all went in smoothly, me fascinated with the manipulation of needle and suture stuff with the forceps. Stitch four, my stomach started to feel queasy. Stitch five, my ears started roaring. Stitch six, my vision went spotty and I sat down, betrayed by my body. I cut open the chest cavities of small mammals, I thought. I work with disembodied hearts on a daily basis. You are stupid, body. I sat there and fumed, angry with myself and at him, until four thirty when we finally left.

***

When I was seventeen something happened to me that should never happen to anyone. I kept it a secret for two years and then told my boyfriend at the time, who responded by telling me that I must have wanted it on some level, especially if I hadn't pursued any sort of legal action against the guy. Two years later I told my parents when they found out all the particulars of my sex life; they like to pretend it never happened and that I never told them. In between I told a few people, whose responses ranged from "I'll fucking kill him" (I have never told anyone his full name to prevent things like this from actually taking place) to an embarassed shrug to an "Oh god, I'm so sorry." Five, almost six years of repression and one VERY unsuccessful attempt at therapy later, I have scabbed over. I am using the money from the PTSD study to get drunk at senior week. At times I feel like I've pulled open on the inside, I'll probably always have a few issues about sex (but who doesn't?) --but I have scarred, and I am whole again.

I don't have to have these dreams no more
'cause I found someone just to hold me tight
hold the insomniac all night