This weekend I was at my mom’s, helping her move some stuff, helping her figure out what to throw, what to give, what to donate. As I stood in the pantry, looking through a cookbook, a cockroach jumped out. Now, if you know me, I’m no good with the roaches. Can’t handle them. I threw the book, screamed. Mom screamed. As the book dropped, a fucking WHITE roach ran toward the closet (presumably away from the sunlight it had never seen!). I jumped–JUMPED–out of the pantry and banged the hell out of my knee.
I knew I’d have a bruise.
As I’ve shown off my bruise, I thought a lot about bruises.
They’re painful. And they’re ugly.
Sometimes bruises show up and you don’t remember where they came from or how you got them. When did I hit my shin? That spot hurts, and it looks like a big bruise, and it’s ugly, but I don’t remember doing that.
You hit that bruise and it’s a reminder. Sometimes you don’t know what it’s a reminder of. How did I hit my arm there? Stuff just comes up. Memories come back. Subtleties trickle in. Wait, maybe it was when I was cleaning the kitchen. Sometimes you really can’t remember where it came from.
Sometimes you know you’re going to bruise. I remember whacking the hell out of my knee. I knew it’d be an impressive bruise, and oh! the story to go with it! (Yes, it was fucking white!!). It’s like a badge of honor. Look what I had to go through and look what I have to show for it! You know when you touch it, that it will hurt. You know that it will hurt during the day. You know the slightest bump will be painful. You know it’ll get worse before it gets better.
It changes colors, it changes intensities. It changes size, new bruising appears. Old bruising fades.
There are bruises that cause a laugh. Like the HUGE one I got when I fell down (not even drinking!) at WurstFest because some people who were drunk couldn’t dance well. That bruise was HUGE!! But the story behind it was hilarious. I liked showing it off, I liked telling people about it. And then when we were in a circle, I tripped or hit something wrong and I crashed into a picnic table.
Or the time I had fingerprints on my leg. Yes, fingerprints from when The Guys picked me up and threw me in the river. Annoyed, although it was funny. We got our revenge… Was fun to say, “Look at the fingerprints you gave me!”
The thing about bruises is that they’re always ugly, they’re most always painful.
But they do go away. The pain and the ugliness does eventually go away.
