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Sometimes, an abrasion hurts the most.
That thin film of skin scraped from the flesh. That stinging
wound too shallow to trigger blood.
She used to play tag a lot. She was a small and clumsy kid,
so she scraped her knees and legs more times than she could count. She would
limp home to her mama, and she would get treated and scolded at the same time. It
was a painful routine, spattered with tears and blood. She hated abrasions more
than anything because they left the skin tender and sensitive, stinging, bleeding
only when she forced it to. Her mama always said she needed to let the wound
bleed out, so it wouldn’t get infected. She was relieved when she would finally
see blood—because then, it would be like her other wounds. But then again, she
scraped her knees and elbows too many times she can’t remember when she stopped
crying because of them.
It was different when her lip was split open, though. She
was six. She had never seen so much blood in her life. It dribbled down to her
clothes all the way to her underwear. There are only flashes now, but she
remembers tasting the saltiness of tears and blood and the bitterness of
crushed malunggay leaves the adults
applied as first aid to her burst lip. She went home to her mama, bawling. She
only remembers showing her mother her blood-stained underwear. Despite the pain
and tears, she couldn’t help but be fascinated by it. The memory ended there.
She forgot how that wound healed and became another permanent oddity she has to
live with for the rest of her life.
She wears the scars today like badges. She has survived that
level. She proudly shows them and tells stories like she has survived a battle.
Because that’s what growing up is—a battle against others, against the self. A
battle to try to accept you and your beautiful imperfections enough for society
to leave you a space in the world. But who would have thought that the next
level would be dull and exhausting? That the wounds she would get as she grew
older would be invisible—no cut, no blood, no visible infected area to apply malunggay leaves and ointment to? No one
prepared her for this. No one told her that the battle she has to wage now is
against the gnawing in her gut, the clawing in her throat, the palpitations that
grip her core too often she can’t distinguish them from the rhythm of her own
heart.
Sometimes, little things hurt the most.
The quiet desperation.
The perennial confusion.
The silent pleas for oblivion.
She hated abrasions the most. But now, she finds herself wishing—more often than she dares to admit—for any kind of cut on her tired body. For droplets of red to slowly trickle down her skin. For any sign that she still exists. And then she weeps. Because if she is existing for nothing, why can’t the void consume her and just give her the hushed darkness her exhausted soul desperately cries for?
