Here’s something simple, but should be a fun exercise. Life scars us. It is an inevitable part of living after all. We get into accidents, do stupid things, or just live experiences that leave a mark. In 300 words or less, tell me why you have that pain.
Do you remember your first time being hurt? The first time your parents bumped you as a baby? When you fell and scraped your knee learning how to walk? No? What about the first time someone else hurt you?
Imagine a child, a young adult, wandering into a wider world. New faces, new experiences, new lessons. Through a screen at home he can talk to the entire world, through classes at school he talks to those closer. A child so invested in these new changes he doesn’t realize when he begins to drift away.
Perhaps it was small, perhaps it was his own mistake or just happenstance. He won’t look back and know he was hurt. Not until he’s alone, awash in a sea of faces that all have names, that once were ‘friends’.
You don’t remember the first time you’re hurt. Not even once it feels like there’s nothing left but scars and holes left where once was other people. The child walks forwards, maybe an adult now, maybe not.
It’s a lonely path if you cannot remember that you’ve been hurt, that you’ve been severed from others by force. He drifts from place to place, but slowly he gains recollection. Not of who hurt him first, but of those who’ve hurt him since. A new name, a new pain, a new way to keep himself and others safe.
Where does the scarring end and the heart begin? Who can tell when they can’t remember what was there before? As long as it still beats, as long as it still feels.
He knows he’s been hurt, he just doesn’t remember how or who. But does it matter anymore? There is still more road to walk, and the scars haven’t faded yet. Just try not to forget the new ones.
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