I have a short horizontal scar on the back of my right
hand. About a centimeter back from where
it ends, I have another vertical scar.
Around the middle of my wrist, there's another vertical scar. My right ring finger has a long gash, just
above the second knuckle. My thumb has a
straight pucker of flesh above the largest, first knuckle.
The first scar was from a wire fence I slashed my hand
on. Can't remember when exactly. My father was living in a park on the
outskirts of some small village in the parts of New York that aren't referred
to as "The City" or "North of The City." I was taking the trash out one
afternoon. Caught my hand between the
door and the latch as it snapped shut.
Couple of paper towels and super glue, and twelve-year-old me figured
that was that.
The second scar I mentioned - along with my thumb - was from
the kitchen. I have too many scars like
these to recall exactly at this point.
The first was a run in with the wrong side of a mandoline slicer. The second, a brand-new knife took first
blood. I was unfamiliar with its weight
and sharpness. Stitched the gash it
caused with some sewing twine and neosporin.
This - among other scars - is one of the primary reasons I prefer
working with my own knives when cooking in someone else's kitchen. From what I've learned in the past some-odd
years, I am not alone in this.
My right ring finger was stitched back together after ice
skating over it. Couple of girls were
flirting during a church social event at an ice skating rink, and I was largely
oblivious. They snuck up and startled me
on the ice, I lost my balance, and in the flailing that ensued - somewhere
prior to landing on my ass and after my pride was bruised for the wear - I
didn't even realize part of the finger stopped... well... fing-ing. Still attached by meat and skin, though. Managed to hack it with my own ice
skate. Put it and my hand on ice, docs
put it back where it mostly fits, and here we are.
The scar around my wrist eludes me, though. It could be from when I wrapped my body
around a broad tree with coarse bark while delivering newspapers in my youth. The roads were icy, there was a car coming
on, it was caught in a slide on the ice, and I was going downhill on a bicycle
roughly pointed at it. I swerved to miss
the vehicle, and folded like a limp noodle around that woody bastard. I know of the scars on my shoulder and elbow,
where the impact tore through my snowsuit and flesh. Spent a week hammering the rim in place in a
sub-zero garage, after an afternoon of walking the route. A journey that was normally 30 minutes now
took an hour and a half, returning with a numb lisp and frozen tear ducts.
It could be from a giant attack rabbit at the shelter. Trudy liked flesh, I have flesh: you see
where this is going. I'm sure someday
I'll remember exactly.
I don't believe that we remember things like the back of our
hands, so much as memories are a lot like the back of a hand. They're evenly laid out, easily observable,
and on a moment-to-moment basis, they form who you are as a person. Sure, there's depth to them, too. There's the bone, muscle, and sinew that goes
into forming you as a person. That's a
lot of stuff to have accessible in a split second, so, for the most part,
"You" in most moments are just the skin on top. And maybe some of the hairs. And that weird mole you should probably talk
to a doctor about.
Then there's hangnails.
Sometimes you remember a fragment of something, and it just sits there,
at the edge of all memories, begging to be picked at and opened. And you can't just sit there staring at
it. When you least suspect, it'll get
snagged on another memory, itch and irritate its way to the forefront with
annoyance over unfamiliarity, or swell up with an urgent inflammation that *this* is the only thing you should be
thinking about.
So you pick at it.
And it hurts - good fucking christ does it hurt as you start peeling
back that memory. There's a bit of depth
to it, it connects to other memories, you realize how deep it is - or at least,
how deep it's going as you open it up.
There's blood - of course, why wouldn't there be? - and the next thing
you know, you have a loose bit of flesh which started as barely a millimeter in
length, now riding close to a centimeter or more away from the nail, bearing
down on the knuckle.
And it hits you: this is why you didn't remember. It hurts.
It's open, and it's bleeding, and it's sore, and it's just this small
thing but all your body feels it. The
very foundation of how your hand works - how your memories work, how your
personality is put together - is opened, and you see a sliver of the way your
body maps out to be the person you are.
You know, which is great and all WHEN YOU AREN'T IN FUCKING HANGNAIL
HELL.
But that's how it is.
We build a map of memories over the things that cause us to hurt and
bleed. We build a mask of flesh over it
so we don't break down looking at the bloody stump we'd otherwise be, and we
move on. Until every now and then,
something gets in our ear and it's that small sliver - that thing we put down
deep - but we just want it to stop getting in the way of who we immediately
are. So, we rip, and it's everywhere,
fresh as an apple from the tree. Marring
up the roadmap of who we are - albeit temporarily.
Now that’s established, part two.
I had this moment recently.
During a conversation where it was jokingly brought up about choosing to
not be a domestic abuser, it just didn't sit right with me. I joked about it during the moment, didn't
get all weird, and it didn't get to me until later in the evening. I was trying to figure out *why* it was still
getting to me. On a rolling basis, I can
recall bits of the time my stepfather lived with us - the big things,
mostly. Being grounded to my room for
entire summers, being a prisoner in our own house other times, loose
recollections of the physical and emotional abuse, the domino effect this had
throughout the home, and so on. It's a
thing I don't put focus on often.
Everyone has their own shit, and it's all - give or take - terribly
relative, and relatively terrible.
So here I was a half hour shy of midnight focusing on a
thing I hadn't done spelunking through since I was - I don't know, 17? -
18? And just like then, I just fuzzed
out. My mind just got wrapped up in the
vivid memories of screaming in the middle of most nights. It would come as waves, once around 10 or so,
and again four or five hours later.
There was an air return in the floor of my bedroom. I would gingerly take off the grate and stuff
it with plush animals, pillows, blankets, clothes - whatever would muffle the
noise. I'd repeat this with the register
in the wall. I'd rather not have heat on a winter's night, or air condition on
a balmy summer's eve than listen. And
there'd be thumping, and more screaming.
And a slam, and more.
The thing is, committing abuse isn't a choice. It's not something a sane person would evaluate
with a conscious, "should I"/"shouldn't I" decision. This is not something to be evaluated, so
much as something to simply never occur.
It's not like wondering if you should have the whole wheat or rye. It's not a morality question regarding people
and children on train tracks: there should never be a question or choice about
physically, emotionally, sexually, or otherwise abusing children and spouses.
Abuse is about regimented, systemic control of another
person or people. In my time, the only
conscious choice the abuser makes is in matters of "rational"
limits. Here, zero is not a value,
unless it exerts control, such as providing zero meals to a person until
they're amenable. Or until they've
apologized for something they never did in the first place. Either/or.
Citing from experience, the evaluation is more, "Did
they wash the dishes the EXACT way I wanted them to, three times, over the
course of two hours?" If yes, the
answer would be to rapidly slip a belt off and whip it across the back and
buttocks region four times. If not done
as described, six. If not, but fingers
and knuckles were bleach-cracked, bleeding, no longer reasonably able to
withstand the scalding hot water, three times. (As a reference, the answer was
three).
Abuse of any kind is not rational. By that means, when I ripped that small
hangnail open - that small, insignificant sliver - that yeah, sure, I could
have just left well enough alone - there's some question about that
rationale. But you know what? - that's
part of the blood and bones beneath the memories that make me the person I am
on a day to day basis. I lived through
abuse, physical and emotional. There's
many things I learned from it, but of most use was how it taught me how to
recognize toxic people. It took me three
years just to be content with myself, all the while smiling like a mad bastard
because that's what I thought was normal.
It took me another five to stand up for my own beliefs, and another
seven after that to just be done with other people forcing theirs on me.
Abuse of any kind is not rational. Joking about it is not rational, either.
