Scar Tissue

Somewhere along Recovery Rd., just south of Bone-Healing Boulevard…

Flash back 1 and half hours ago:

I put on some knee high, navy blue socks I found in a closet. Put on my mom’s oversized tennis shoes. Put on a glittery tank, a fluffy pink jacket and some rose gold shades I ordered online from Amazon. Both my legs were wrapped; my left in my 3 lb brace and my right, just swollen with some ace bandage hastily wrapped around. 

Off to therapy I went, looking and feeling like a real bum. I stuffed some Cheetos in my right pocket and a vegetable hot pocket in my left. My left knee was sore, but I was excited to see my therapist and his technicians. Probably the best part of my week, therapy, because the people there understand what I’m going through.

I got in, and- to my surprise- my therapist said he was ‘working on me’ today. That means I get a lot of treats like ice, massage, stretching and just a lot of TLC on my knees. In general, I get maybe 5% of the TLC I actually need toward my knees. They need a lot, a lot of love.

So, I was on the table relaxing and my therapist was bending my knee slowly- a little further, a little longer. I was not eager to let him bend it. He chuckled, saying “She’s thinking ohhhh no, the pain’s gonna come, the pain’s gonna come- and then it doesn’t. And she’s like ‘phew’, good!”

“What, are you reading my mind, Felix?” I laughed. One of the other therapists came over to me and began talking to me, to try to distract me for a few minutes. I began to focus on explaining my knee injury and surgery. When all of a sudden…

Pop. And my knee was in agonizing pain, took my breath away. I cried out. I was back on the ground, on the cold icy concrete. Lying on the ground, knee pulled out of place. I was crying- completely caught off guard…

“Shhhh… it’s okay, it’s okay. Breathe, Sarah, breathe.”

“Sweetie, it’s okay, breathe, Breathe.”

I was still on the bed, the pain was only momentary and then it was gone. Felix was holding onto my leg, massaging it. “There we go. There we go. See, is it okay, is it okay? It’s okay now, isn’t it.” My knee was now bent, feeling a little warm, but generally, I felt relieved.

“That was the scar tissue. We just had to break that scar tissue. Now your knee is bent. Now it’s better.” My therapist was gently rubbing my knee, reassuring me that I had not, in fact, injured it again. That my surgery wasn’t all for nothing, not all my progress lost.

Tears streamed down my face. Scar tissue, when it breaks, can be painful and it can throw you off guard, to say the least.

In his warm, Mexican accent he said ,”You know, it’s like when you have a strip of bacon and then you just pull and pull on it until it… breaks. ” I imagined a piece of bacon strip attaching my bones together. “That’s like scar tissue, you just have to break it.”

I laughed a little through my tears. I was still a little shocked and a little scared, but my leg already felt better, a little more relaxed and it was warm. When the scar tissue broke, my brain released a lot of happy chemicals, and my body felt safer.

—

So it made me think: in life, we can accumulate a lot of scar tissue. Even if we’re being careful, sometimes things build up, little bits of scar tissue make themselves at home in our bodies.

Starting in our neck. We can become so strained, watching our backs- making sure we don’t get double-crossed. We’re on alert, to be better, to win, to make the move. So tissue starts to form from our skull to our shoulder blades. And our necks start to ache.

In our chest, we get wounded. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Maybe someone wrongs us, hurts us in a terrible way. We don’t want to cry anymore, we don’t want to feel that pain in our chest, so we breathe more shallow, we don’t move, we don’t open up our heart as much. And scar tissue forms around our pericardium, the little sac that our hearts sit in.

Maybe we get tired of chasing shadows, ghosts and dark dreams we’ve made up for ourselves. Our knees and ankles get tired, our thighs feel heavy. Maybe we get tired of running from what scares us, the darkness we are so afraid of. And scar tissue wraps around our legs.

We might find ourselves weary, short of breath, in pain and numb. And we don’t even realize it until we choose to go forward. Take the risk- let it break .

And, sure, it’ll be scary, it might knock the wind out of us! But once the tissue breaks, you’ll be relieved, weight lifted. It has to be broken for you to go on, to be free. And becoming strong takes time. It takes smiles, tears, helping hands, friends, family and even some tough love- but healing can happen once we accept that we have to say goodbye to all of our

scar tissue. 

For the Love of Words

Well, I’m back. Post-breakup. Guess what brought me back to life? WORDS! Of my friends, of God, of books!

And I’m better than ever. I have more energy, I feel. And let me tell you all the extraordinary things people have been saying to me.

‘Sarah, I can see by your countenance that you haven’t been running.’ -Brad Hepner

Moral of said quote: I need to start exercising again. Ian Mills said: MAKE time. Well, if I could MAKE time, I’d be immortal or something.

I was playing with words, and reading through my journal; I found a brilliant quote from myself.–>

‘Ian is complacent & Lyn is complaisant.’ Here is a perfect example of what you can do with the English language. If you would look up the definition of these two words, you could then understand a key personality difference between these two humans in my life. Now, ofcourse, Ian isn’t truly complacent, but fundamentally, these words paint a picture with which I cannot argue.

‘We have bad farts, but good hearts’ -My roommates. I feel this speaks for itself. I, however, would like to say that I am not included in this ‘we’. But, I do have a good heart. 😉 Flatulence is a touchy subject for even the most despicable.

‘He was a million miles from a million dollars, but you could never spend his wealth.’ – One Republic.

Said quote is one that describes my life to a T. (A tee? A tea? I don’t know.)

Here is a bit of wisdom that I have learned and would like to share with the fellow human race:

When people are offended by something you’ve said, it’s because they know/believe it’s true and it upsets them that you pointed it out.

Here are a few rules to abide by, if you are character building:

1. Be your own person. There’s already a version of everyone else. You’re an original. Literally, no one else has the same DNA. Think about that one.

2. Have your own opinions, but know that your opinions are not end-all. It’s foolish to think so.

3. Learn to think. Read “The Little Blue Thinking Book” by Brandon Royal. You won’t regret purchasing this and perhaps passing it on to your loved ones, eventually.

4. Coffee isn’t THE way, but it is A way. And an EFFECTIVE way, at that.

5. Invest in cleaning supplies. A dirty floor is a sad, sad, sad floor.

6. Brush your hair out. It really makes a difference.

And finally-

7. Never forget and always remember that when someone loves you, you’ll know it. Love is a tremendous thing.

Yours, truly.

 

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” -Albus Dumbledore

 

Post-Mortem Diagnosis: Died of a Broken Heart

Hello.

For the record, I’d like to say that I realize now with an extraordinary amount of sorrow what it’s like to have your heart broken. Not because the one you love said you’re ugly or slapped you across the face. No. That’s not it. Not because he said you’re stupid and worthless and have no hope for life. No. That’s not it.

Rather, it’s because he said he doesn’t like your family. That, in essence, is far worse than all the preceding insults combined. That is to cut deep within the soul, and to leave it there bleeding. Yet WHAT kind of person will so easily disrespect the loved ones of their loved one? I know not. But I couldn’t have guessed that the feeling that has been eating away at my soul was because I could feel the dislike radiating from him toward the people I love the most in the world.

My friends, no one deserves that. I wouldn’t even wish it upon him.

I’d like to say that I don’t really have words to describe how much it hurts to think about.

I don’t have words to describe how empty I feel that he doesn’t even know how to apologize, that he never will, and he will probably never know that he needs to. All I can say is that I hope he never does this to anyone else. No woman deserves such sorrow.

Before he dropped this bomb of Cold War caliber, I was going to give him this quote to describe how I’ve been feeling uncared for.

 

“When men are respected, they feel cherished. When women are cherished, they feel respected.”

And, unfortunately, I feel neither cherished nor respected and I never did. And, unfortunately, that is the truth.