I said I'd be covering the subject of scars, right?

It's amazing how little time it took to do this amazing artwork. I love MS paint.

Let us count them together shall we? 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

There are 9 scars on my body clearly visible to the naked eye. Most of those red spots indicate multiple scars on one location, but for the sake of efficiency I'll just go with 9. For each single mark I can tell you why and I can tell you how. On more than half I can even tell you who. The ones on my left knee and right calf (diagonal) are most recent. The one diagonally cut into my right calf being only a few days old, and still forming an absolutely gorgeous scab. In the field of psychology this act is referred to rather pleasantly as Self-mutilation. Lovely term, isn't it?

Colloquially it is known as cutting. This is the term more people are familiar with. I beg of you though, please do not compare me to an "emo" person. Like most I am mildly annoyed by this subset of goth culture, but I find them manageable and easily avoidable. My own scars are not evidence of some deep hidden pain I keep locked away, or a crushing ennui and weltshmerz that many seem to wear on their sleeve. It is one's actions that define them, not the statement they make about them. If you're sad all the time, go on some blasted antidepressants. I've been stuffed full of the things for years. But I was never really made happy by pills. Even now I'm not fulfilled by the reaction these things have on me. Xanax is supposed to be a treatment for anxiety. However, I find it is as true to call it an apathy inducer.

My multiple scars are proof that I have lived through some especially difficult part of my existence so far. I am young, and am sure that I've yet to gain a full appreciation for the word "difficult," but for where I am now: coasting along plan A in my life, some parts have been harder than others.

It is a "happy accident" that when my most recent girlfriend hastily ended it she had only weeks earlier borrowed my good knife and neglected to return it to me. The knife she borrowed was my first I used on myself and the only one with which I shared enough of a report to have attempted suicide. In a rage I dumped my box of weaponry upon a loved one's desk. I haven't asked for them back yet. I'm not ready to have such easy access again. But eventually I'll have to in order to prove to myself that the life I'm living without her is worth it.

By lacking in memory to return my favorite blade Sarah saved my life. The scars I've left using cheap multi-tools and razorblades are proof to me that I lived through her.

My own appearance has forced me to create a position on scarring and body alteration through physical means and after much contemplation I have come to one: Each mark or scar or blemish upon your skin is yet another proof that life was lived in it. Many try to keep themselves perfect and serene like a white plaster sculpture. But so few know that the Greeks and the Romans brightly painted those and it is only time that has stripped the color from their cheeks. I have many scars of the physical and mental variety. As was so wisely observed in a recent short film I watched when asked if the pain of hot coals would scar.

"...What pain doesn't?"

The more scars or marks upon a person's hide, the more they have lived. Sarah had a scar from a cesarean section she needed performed on her. I made a special point when I found my hands brushing against it as I explored her body in the dark that my lips came to rest upon the scar in acknowledgment.

Every painful moment we have endured has brought us here, and for now we are left with the moment. More pain and scars are to come. And they, too, must be endured.

I'll take the battered and broken beauty of the Venus de Milo over the pristinely preserved and complete Aphrodite of Cnidus any day of the week.