Flesh Wound

It was when I tugged on my left coat sleeve to reveal my watch—indicating that I was late for work—that I noticed it. Perhaps it was because it was so chilly out, or the dryness of the skin on the top of my hand, but it was just so prominent at that moment. It was as if the injury had been inflicted that morning.

I ended up with the scar on the top of my left hand because of an old girlfriend. Shortly after I arrived in Seattle, things fizzled with my first girlfriend whom I’d been with for four years and I met someone new. This new person was intriguing and exciting and different from anything I’d had before (please take a moment to consider how limited my scope of experience was at this point, my sophomore year in college). She was also stubborn.

In a playful moment, she had grabbed at my arm (I fail now to remember exactly why). She accidentally scratched my hand as I was pulling away and, in my own silly stubborn way, trying I guess to counter her stubbornness, I refused any help from her. No Band-Aid. No Neosporin. She warned that it would scar. No, it wouldn’t, I shot back.

This was one of the many instances in which she was right (the further removed I became from the break-up, the more times I realized she was right and I was not).

We were only together for three short weeks and then it was over. I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach for a long time. It was my first “real” break-up and all I now had to show from the whole ordeal was a quarter-inch long, slightly raised wavy line on the top of my left hand.

＊ ＊ ＊

It lasted the summer and then that was it. It was over as quickly and dramatically as it had begun. As affecting as it was, though, I can’t escape the sheer mundanity of the way the whole thing went, beginning to end, which (reflecting on it now) elicits a special kind of shame and pathetic woe.

She told me that I based too much of my experience on the girlfriends I’ve had. She didn’t say it that eloquently (and I’m paraphrasing) but that was the essence of it. I think deep down it genuinely made her uncomfortable for me to talk about my past experiences of women. Though, for me, it was the only way to make sense of the whole act of coupling. Talking about my previous relationships was I guess just my attempt to get to the root of my desire to even be in a relationship at all. Or something of that nature. Writing this now, I don’t even really know why I’m compelled to talk about those kinds of things. I just thought that everybody did.

But she hated it.

Perhaps I do talk about old flames too much. Perhaps to the extent that it’s annoying, or overly sentimental, or even obsessive. I least of all am qualified to make that judgement.

But walking alone, late for work, and seeing my hand reminded me that failed relationships are scars themselves. And scars have stories.

And little does she know that she is an open wound that will scab and one day become a scar, that will one day be nothing more than a sad story to tell. She will become in me exactly what she didn’t like about me.