gingerly

today i feel like tracing a slow fingertip around the outlines of my life. to remember where i'm at, to take inventory. i keep touching this new scar on my arm. watching it turn white when i slide my finger over it, and then back to red again. there are a few places where it's jagged, bumpy... the edges didn't meet up in quite the same place. it's harder underneath it in some places and not others. parenthesized by new white stretch marks, from being pulled open so long, and then pulled closed and then trying to hold together while my arm was swollen and healing.

i thought i would be so...self-conscious of this scar, but i'm not. not yet, anyway. it's a badge of courage to me, right now. a mark of character. distinct proof that i could do a hard thing, and make it out to the other side. it's a reminder to me, how quickly things change. it's a long line of patience and work and drawn out nights and tears. it's a tangible proof of change and instant. it's a thread in the tapestry, as it were.

i started typing, not intending to write about my scar. or my surgery or my cancer or any of that. but it seems like every line of thought circles back to it right now, because it's been my main focus for the last two months. it has been.

i am finding new things to focus on, now that i'm on the other side. or i am finding that i am ready to admit that there are other things i'm focused on. it's a quick and difficult lesson to learn, surprisingly. life is short. you hear it, you know it, but you don't know it until you find yourself in that moment where you're straight lucid and realize you're in idiot for ever thinking about ending it early yourself, because now that it's not in your control anymore, you want it. and you want it more than anything else you can think about.

and by some crazy miracle you get to keep it. and you get back out into your life and everything feels new and possible again. and why worry about what anyone thinks anymore? do what you have to to make yourself happy.

life is short.

say all those things you keep locked on the back of your tongue. let them roll forward, fall off. get up and do the things you've only been letting yourself imagine doing.

i can feel it deep in my new bone. just watch. i'm gonna go kerouac on everyone's ass.