Horriblescopes and Scars

I read the Gemini & Cancer horoscopes that Rob Breszny writes, just to keep up w/the tides that move people who end up in my life. All the people I know seem to be Geminis, Cancers & Scorpios... but anyway, today in RB's Gemini horoscope, his blurb at the bottom said something about playing the Game of Scars. He said the game was meant to be played with someone empathetic (or maybe empathic, who knows?).

I've got a few physical scars, but it's kind of weird to me how many things have happened that didn't scar me. I've been burned badly twice - once when I was 3 & once when I was 5. I grabbed and held onto a soldering iron when I was 3, and when I was 5 we were bobbing for apples and I stumbled into a blazing barbecue grill. On both occasions, I got to undergo the lovely process of debridement - the meticulous process of removing dead tissue that often accompanies third-degree burns. I didn't scar from my encounter with the soldering iron, and the only noticeable difference between my barbecued arm and non-barbecued arm is that the grain of my skin sort of spirals from my elbow inward on the barbecue arm - it looks sort of rippled, but unless you look closely you honestly cannot see the difference. I only notice it because I know what to look for. I lost a finger, but you can't tell where it was reattached. The scar from the bouncy-horse spring has melded into the rattlesnake bite, which blends into the scar from where I had a pin in my leg. One burn that did scar was from a pen I melted (that trick of getting ink to flow by warming a pen w/a lighter? Yeah.) - plastic dripped onto me & took some of me away when I peeled it off. That got me deep enough to where I don't even have any hair follicles in that patch of skin. I've got the scars from the pins in my leg, deep dimples that would probably take plastic surgery to minimize. A weird lump of knotted flesh on my hip that used to look like the imprint of a turn signal. Scars on the sides of my pinkies from breaking glasses while washing them. An ancient echo of a badly scraped knee alongside the suture-marks from my knee surgery that already look ancient and faded. Scars on my ankles from knicking them with a razor while shaving. A cross - all that remains of the time I carved the anarchy symbol into my arm. A tattoo covers the faded patchy remains of 'Sleaze Dog' carved in my hip - I did that upside down, not a bad trick if I say so myself. A stutter-mark down both wrists - why it left marks like that I don't know - the attempt was quite earnest and bloody, but whatever blood type I have has an insane clotting factor. Alongside the stutter marks on one wrist are four neat puncture marks - an encounter with a Chow who did not want to go back inside the house when I wanted her to. She won the argument, mainly because I had to stop the bleeding and clean the ceiling before my sister got home.

I can see them because I know where to look for them, but most of my injuries didn't leave permanent marks. Emotional things that have happened to me are pretty much the same. My memories fade away, not because I'm not trying to hold onto some shred of who I am, but over time they just slip away. Not a great deal of time has passed between me and childhood, but it seems faint and far away. I remember bits and pieces, the general atmosphere that surrounded me, spirits of time and place haunt me moreso than people in my life or houses I inhabited.

I'm probably going to develop Alzheimer's or dementia when I get older.

A lot of people worry about leaving something for posterity, they want people to remember them and the things they've said or done. They want to make a mark on the world. I want to be like my scars. I don't want to make an impression on anyone, I don't want anyone to remember me when I'm gone. Except, strangely enough, for myself if and when I come back, in some other life.

Rob called me to tell me there was thunder and lightning along with real rain. And I am stuck in a windowless basement.