“If you desire healing,
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.”

―Rumi

I have a scar running from my belly button down, almost to my pubic bone.

It doesn’t bother me. I don’t think about it most of the time. But it holds memories. It tells me a story about myself. What I’ve been through. What I’ve survived. What I might not have survived.

Pain marks us.

You fall down and bruise your hip, you’re gonna limp for a while.

You fall down and break your hip, maybe you’re gonna limp forever.

We know this.

Surviving the pain marks us, too.

You take a risk, you do a thing, and it doesn’t work: you fall down. You get bruised. Next time, you’ll pause. You’ll remember, and think:

• “I’ve done this before. Nope. I know how this ends. It hurts.”

• “I’ve done this before. It might hurt. But even if I fall again, I know I’ll survive.”

You take a risk, you fall hard, and it’s bad. You get broken. The pain is real and raw and ragged. The recovery is slow, so slow, and while you’re in it, still in the pain, the bones are setting, regrowing. The wound is healing. The marks will be there: the twinge, the scar tissue.

You don’t get to choose whether the pain marks you. But you get to decide what the marks mean.

🔗 This song by Jensen McRae gives me goose bumps. Listen to it.