So I found this in the “drafts” folder just now: an empty post titled “weird scar update.” And I have noooooo idea what it means. I’m serious. None. A few years back I came up with a headline for a blog post I never wrote.

I’ve written about my scars before, so, no, it isn’t all that unusual as topics go, not really, not on a blog with the word “shit” in the title, and not for someone as multifariously scarred as I am. It is perfectly normal for me to be telling you about my unsealed wounds both psychological and physical.

But still: “weird scar update.” What the hell was that? What did I mean? Was it a reference to my latest hangnail? A glass shard embedded on the bottom of my right foot? That time someone compared a conversation with me to sitting through the “Ring” cycle?

Again: no idea. I can’t say what I’d planned on writing about at the time. However, as fate and coinky-dinks would have it, I do have some exciting news to report on the skinned-knee front, having taken a rather gymnastic fall on the ice outside church recently. It was one of those whoopty-whoops feet-in-the-air vaults into space that Linus suffered at the hands of Lucy and, in my case, thankfully resolved not with a spinal injury but with a rough landing on all fours. As a memento, I now sport a pair of lingering, sangria-colored splotches just below my left kneecap.

I have no idea whether these scars will ever fade. I’m hoping, at least, that they’ll dial down to a nice shade of burgundy or hibiscus in time for bare-legs season, which I refuse to refer to as “spring” or “summer” given that the damned weather is still behaving like damned winter and I actually wore my damned down parka to work this morning, dammit.

To be honest, I kind of doubt they’ll ever disappear, or even diminish. Scars tend not to. But looking at them tonight, it hit me: those two wee splotches on my skin resemble EYEBALLS, people! Yes! Eyeballs! A little off-center, a little drunken and dorky, but open. Cheerful. Wide-eyed. Trusting. And so, being truly and unapologetically bizarre, aiming to fulfill the cryptic weirdo promise of this heretofore unwritten blog post, I grabbed a marker, drew a smile on my kneecap and added a dot for a nose. 

Dwelling on this artful portrait, which I did for approximately eighteen seconds before scrubbing it off, I pondered its resemblance to the Mona Lisa and other Renaissance masterworks. No, wait. That is a lie. I did no such thing, though surely the contrasts in light resemble chiaroscuro, do they not? Again I lie. They do not.

In conclusion, I would like to come up with some beautiful and insightful profundity with which to cap this ridiculous post, but I don’t think I have it in me. Maybe something about smiling through the pain of existence? Choosing hope over despair and faith in the aftermath of trauma? The importance of putting a happy face on the shit that flies our way, sending our asses to the sky and our knees to the sidewalk? The need to get up after a fall and keep at it, keep moving, keep swinging one scarred leg after another into the unseeable future? The transformative power of a Sharpie in reshaping our conceptions of ourselves?

And there you have it. Weird scar update. The end.