When I was a child, I was abused by my father physically and mentally. I could write a book on the topic, the new and increasingly twisted methods he came up with until I turned 11, and finally got put into foster care, but it was early on, before he got good enough at walking the line, and keeping the abuse from being easily identified that I feel the need to talk about.

I couldn't tell you the crime I committed, the rule I had broken that was so wrong, but when I was seven he slashed the belt on my chest so hard and so many times my whole chest was a bloody mess.

By the end of the day, it was a giant scab, and after only a few weeks, the scab peeled away, revealing a raised scar that covered mostly the left side of my chest. By the next year it was above the left nipple and spanned to the shoulder.

Over the years it was there, and at first I hid it from other kids with shirts at the pool, dressing elsewhere in dressing rooms, whatever I could do. But a part of me started relying on the scar. Feeling it on sleepless nights, looking at it in the mirror so I could remind myself I wasn't crazy, it all really happened.

Now, in my twenties, it's barely visible, and the bumps are receding. I know in a few short years it'll be gone, and all I'll have is the mental trauma, and I don't know. Maybe I'm afraid I'll have nothing to hold onto, or that I'm supposed to be over everything because my body has moved on. I've considered a tattoo there to both commemorate it and empower me, but the truth is I'm not sure who I'll be without the scar.

I figured this was a fitting sub because I'm literally getting something off my chest, and figuratively. It's mostly a ramble, but I just needed it written down.