Abrasion

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?