What I learned in school, is what being damaged to does to you. It teaches you struggle is a bad word and that success is effortless if you’re not perfect right away you’re not right at all your words only have value according to the rubric your cries of pain are only noteworthy when the wound blisters scarlet red and sticks and stones are as harmless as the air used to launch them, never mind that they broke your spirit well before your bones they’re just kids.
I was a kid too. Yet you locked me behind an iron desk for first an hour, then two, because despite how desperately I pleaded, you assumed that because you cared, that meant you couldn’t hurt me. I have no scars on my skin to show you, unless you count the words I never wrote because thinking about this made me choke.
And writing about it made it real.
You don’t get a scar when your body is convinced it can no longer draw breath, and you learn to count to four and hold for four before you ever open up a trig book to page four. I have scars because I am here to be healed, I am here, still.
Trees that fall in forests don't scar, but the grove where they once stood misses them.
This is how I rode my bike every day after school, I rode it back home safely as I could.
Because I learned to shoulder my weight in gold and understand on my own terms that my gold standard is the only one worth anything to me.