“It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don’t agree. The wounds remain. Time – the mind, protecting its sanity – covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.” — Rose Kennedy

If anyone knew about pain it was Rose Kennedy. She had nine children, two dying in airplane explosions/crashes, and two dying from assassinations. I don’t have to tell you who the latter two were. One of her daughters was “slow” and was given a lobotomy at 20 which left her incapacitated in an institution for the rest of her life (she lived to be 86). What Rose Kennedy lived through must have been pain. She was a bit of a mystery until her personal papers, diaries, and photos were revealed 12 years after she died at 104 years of age. She knew that life was full of love and wonderful times and pains that remain as scars. After losing so much in her life, she said that “tragedy had to follow triumph, as surely as night follows day.”

Those are scars.

Most of the scars we carry around aren’t physical. Maybe we don’t realize it, but we do. Things are hard. Life is hard. Having people in your life is hard. Even the best of people can leave scars.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for some time after Kennedy’s quote. She left over 150,000 diaries, papers, and photos when she died. She requested them not to be available to the public until 12 years after she passed. This computer screen in my diary. I publish my thoughts, beliefs, lots of silliness, scars. 10MB to be exact as of 2pm today, when I exported my old site into this very site you’re viewing now. 16 years of writing. This is my diary. I don’t know how many pages it would print into. I don’t know that anyone would care if it were only released after I pass one day. I live life as it happens. I update my Facebook routinely. My Instagram when I think of it. My Twitter when I remember I have one. So, in these modern times (doesn’t each generation think of themselves being in “modern times?” That phrase means nothing, really. What I mean is that my friends and family and people who come across this blog from all corners of the globe (shoutout to my Japanese and Ukrainian and Indian readers) know my opinion in a minute.

My joy. My love. My sadness. My hate. My views. My scars. It’s all out there.

So, if you have scars, know that it’s the body’s way of healing. I believe this is true “on the inside.” You will heal. We all do. And for the scars that are on the inside, this poem is from poet Lang Leav:

“Wounded”

A bruise is tender
but does not last,
it leaves me as
I always was.

But a wound I take
much more to heart,
for a scar will always
leave its mark.

And if you should ask me
which you are,
my answer is –
you are a scar.