marks unaccounted for

I will always have at least one bruise somewhere on my body.. at all times. Sometimes I know where they've come from, but most of the time I have no idea where I got them. Right now I have an interesting bruise on the inside of my leg and one above each knee, none of which I can explain. I always have at least one on either shin, also unaccounted for. Today I acquired a new, very lovely bruise on my already hurt ankle. I was pulling myself out of the pool after catching a swim between classes and my foot caught on the edge of the pool. When I got out I noticed a chunk of flesh from my big toe was gone and replaced with a nice gush of blood that kept coming for about 20 minutes and which is now covered with a cute little Obi-Wan band-aid that Anna Loi gave me. Along with my new flesh wound was a painful blue bump on the top of my ankle. Something in there got hit, popped, and is now a nice shade of bright blue. At least I can tell you how that one happened. This kind of bruise wouldn't really bother me except for the fact that the whole foot has been bugging me for a good 3 weeks now. I officially have tendonitis.. and it hurts like a muffin-eater to walk on it if I don't take my doctor-approved meds. From the top of my big toe up to my ankle, right where my new bruised is placed, is on fire half the time. The doctor said to try to stay off it, ice it and start physical therapy to fix the damage I've already done. I've bought ice trays, but they sit empty on the kitchen shelf. Stay off my feet.. on a campus college... not happening. Physical therapy I have succeeded at-- second session tomorrow morning, though I've not been the best at keeping up with my homework. Aand I'm really bad about taking medication.. and so I wonder why the pain persists. I'm such a bright person.

And the scars I have.. so many that I do not have stories to tell about. Maybe two.. I can tell you two stories.. if that. I have a big one on my right knee that I attained on a middle school retreat. That one came with a concussion, package deal! We were playing some stupid game and I was running across some kind of court with a huge bouncy ball, two girls on either side of me ran into me, the ball went flying and so did I. I skidded across the asphalt and finally stopped, turned on my back and everything was black and spinning. Scrapes along the side of my face, my hands and arm, and a nice bloody gash on my knee. What a site to see, an even more delusional Sierra than usual.
The other one I can tell, and I'm not sure it really counts as a scar, is from this summer. I say I'm not sure whether it counts as a scar because its just a dark spot on the inside of my right foot.. so I guess it kind of is a scar..? We were riding horses in the sand dunes of Peru.. yes, it was amazing. My horse was going a little too fast down the dunes, and as we turned to go up the next one, his knees buckled and I was gone. In the process of me falling off the horse he kicked me in the foot and then fell on top of the right side of my body. Luckily my back had been killing me the few days before and I was already on some pretty heavy pain killers, so it didn't seem as bad as it was when it happened. The spot where he kicked me, where pain was shooting through for a few days is where he left his mark, the little shadow of a scar. There was internal scarring--if that even makes sense-- inside my right leg for a few months.

Other scars I have are all over my legs-- some of the mysterious bruises have actually left scars, somehow. I guess I do have another scar, mostly faded now. It was quite prominent for a few years tho. I backed into a radiator one summer in Ecuador and had three fat lines on my calf burnt into my flesh, what a great feeling. I guess a few of the scars I've had can be proof of some of the places I've been, so I guess that's cool. There are several tiny marks that tell of the couple of times that I've ventured into the wild and dangerous Amazon jungle where bugs of all sorts liked to take a little flesh and blood from me (please note sarcasm, I am simply appeasing those who have a certain image of Colombia).

I've come to realize that the bruises that I cannot explain just come from my clumsiness. Most people go through a clumsy stage in middle school, maybe even into high-school; it's a phase, you get over it. I have no hope of getting over it because I know that my mom has never gotten over it. Clumsiness is not a stage in life, it's a way of life for my mother and I. We have two left feet and can't make sense of the spaces we're in. I remember one morning in high-school my mother came up to my room on the third floor to wake me up for school and as she left my room and started walking down the spiral staircase she somehow fell and ended up face down, legs above her, moaning. It was a miracle she didn't break both her legs, they were just badly bruised, but seriously, how do you even achieve to fall that way? She has serious skill.