just like I always wanted.

Now Playing: All Too Well by Taylor Swift (you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest)

As something of an expert on scars, I'll be the first to tell you that scars don't fade; I have more than enough scars that are older than memory to prove that. You can forget getting them, you can forget being angry at them, you can forget all those nights you cried over how ugly they make you feel. You can even forget them even when they're there, in plain sight; my scars aren't alien to me and so it doesn't often occur to me that my scars are different, my scars are other, my scars make my body look radically different from yours. But scars, once you get them, are always there, and we are all scarred people. Because the scar itself isn't the wound that caused you pain; the scar is a sign of the healing process, but also of our inability to fully get over anything, as if it never happened. Scars are the glue that holds us together, the only things that keep us going; like my pacemaker can never leave my body because my heart is literally too broken to function on its own. Nothing can ever be as if it never happened. It happened, and there's nothing you can do to change that.

I think people forget that we are all scarred people; we only remember our own scars, and we consider our scars the thing that makes us other; better, worse, more important, utterly insignificant, when in reality scars are universal. Not all scars are physical but all of them are real; you can't see my real scars but if you know me at all you know that they are anything but invisible. But scars are what we make of them; I have been shamed for my scars and glorified for them; people have kissed them better and others have torn them apart again.

I have a habit of living in the past; at the moment I seem to be existing solely on memories, which is a kind of surreal and dreamy but somewhat unpleasant experience. But there are memories which I have gone to great pains to block out, only to have someone lay bare all the scars of my younger and more vulnerable years. The people don't matter anymore, and somehow all that was said and done feels like water under the bridge - which is definitely not how I felt about it at the time. But the pain was real, and it still feels real, even now. If I remembered all the pain and trauma of my scars, physical or emotional, I would be too fucked to function. I have to forget. Living is about forgetting, teaching yourself to forget, forcing yourself to forget even the people who feel like they're keeping you together. This is why we have scars; we don't need anything else to keep it all together. But that's the thing we forget. 

I grew up on a solid diet of chick lit and rom coms, and there's always that moment when the guy comes back. It's normally raining, and he'sn normally throwing pebbles at her window. I had that moment, a couple of days ago, just like I always wanted. And it was horrible - like having scars torn open and having to sew them back together again. I had grown so strong without you, forgotten all about you and all the scars you made, but now I can see them again; harsh and cold, just like you are.