My bubble bath smells exactly like St. Joseph's baby aspirin

Which of course hurls me into a back-in-time tailspin to the time I split my chin open trying to sneak some out of my grandparents' medicine cabinet when I was around four or so. I don't remember being hauled to the hospital to have the four stitches put in, but I do remember thinking the docs were dumb to strap me down like that, as if I weren't a Big Girl, able to control myself and hold still.

I still have the ubiquitous chin scar. Thirty six (almost) years later. This is somehow surprising. Scars can surprise you.

My little brother had a horrific bicycle accident when he was eight and I was nine. It involved gravel and riding another kid on his handlebars and a very steep hill, and culminated in an overnight hospital stay. Aside from the head injury and lost teeth, he scraped off the skin from both knees, so much so that he couldn't bend his knees for weeks. Big, knee-sized scabs. Anyway, about five years ago we were hanging out at some family barbecue and I noticed he had some big scars on the front of his legs, about mid-thigh. Turns out they are the scars from the long-ago bike accident. It blew my mind. Apparently your leg skin grows outward from the bottom as your legs grow. Who knew?

And seven years ago I broke my pelvis. It knitted back together a little off, which throws a very slight bend in my spine, and causes the muscles to compensate up and down my back. The upshot is that every once in a while my back will sieze up somewhere. Rarely in the same spot and usually without warning. It will be a lifelong issue. Not all that debilitating, but still a regular inconvenience.

Recently I have come face to face with some new, less corporeal scars. Things I didn't realize were there, holding me back in my new life, residue from sadness and lonliness that I did not really expect. I find myself more hesitant, less confident, assuming worse of people than they most likely feel.

I

do

not

like it.

One some level I know that I am still the person I once was, just as deserving of happiness and love, just as fun and funny and interesting and sexy. And on another level there is that litle voice. The one that reminds me that at any minute anyone can just change his or her mind about you and *POOF* gone. I hate that little fucker.

I am unwilling to learn to incorporate this scar into my life, my future. I won't just live with it. This is a scar I want to erase. I don't know where to begin.

Maybe right here.