scars are souveniers you never lose

Assignment #11: Photograph a scar and write about it.

Photograph a scar on your body or on someone else's body. Make it a close-up shot so that it shows just the scar. Include a story (write it on a computer as a separate file, don't write it on the photograph) about how the scar happened. Please do not send images of wounds that are fresh and have not healed. Only images of scars will be accepted.

When I was in the seventh grade, I weighed 60 pounds. At the time I was doing competitive gymnastics (I trained up to level 8), and I was at the gym up to 25 hours a week, even more in the summer. Gymnastics was something that I ate, breathed, and slept, and at the time that seemed perfectly normal to me. Towards the end of seventh grade, several injuries, culminating in an elbow injury in which I temporarily lost mobility in my arm/elbow, forced me to quit the sport that had become my life. (For anyone who's interested, pieces of the cartilage from my elbow had chipped off and become lodged in the joint, impeding movement--gross, I know). It is a well-known fact that gymnastics usually stunts growth, especially for girls who begin training at a young age. Within less than a year of stopping, my very muscular, very small body gained over three inches in height and thirty pounds, and over the next few years the exponential growth spurt continued. (I'm just barely 5'2'' now, so you can imagine how small I was before). The stretch marks on my body are the result of those changes. Those marks-- tiny white networks that seemed to infiltrate the once soft, firm, adolescent skin of my thighs, legs, and even my knees-- became the outward scars of an inner battle between myself and my body that some days I still fight. Generally, however, the scars no longer bother me; they are a part of me and my past and my present. As for gymnastics-- I still have dreams where I'm flying through the air and I wake up with my palms sweating from the thrill of it.