Only six weeks left. Six weeks to the end.

I see myself back home. The hugs from friends I haven’t seen in too long. The laughter, the love. The rain, the grey skies, the music and newest trends I’m missing out on. Six weeks, and I’ll have all of it again.

I love my life. Not here. Not there. I love all of it, all of the people in it, all over the world.

Do you ever become grateful to the people who’ve hurt you? Sometimes I do. I think about them, the different ways they’ve cut and bruised me. I think about how broken up I was, how I felt that I would never heal.

I have a cut on my thumb that I got from carelessly slicing through some maraqueta yesterday. I let it bleed, rinsed it, inspected it. I pulled the small wound apart to see layers of white skin, without a speck of blood. Minutes after I wounded my own flesh, my body had aleady clotted the blood. It had started to repair itself, regenerating cells to join those bits of flesh back together.

Soon, any trace of it might be gone forever, without a blemish of evidence that ever indicated pain. Or, maybe it will take longer to heal, leaving a toughened bit of skin. Something to match my other scars. Something to remind me.

It’s kind of incredible, when you think about it — that our bodies can heal and recover from all kinds of stresses and wounds, many without a trace of having ever existed. Our bodies are built to be repaired.

And for some reason, we always forget that this applies to the whole. Our bodies, of course, but also our minds, and our souls.

People have hurt me. I’ve hurt people. Humans, for all of our advancements in technology and human rights, will still hurt each other. Relationships are complex, fragile, and they’re never infallible. We push each other, we fall. We cut each other, we bleed. Sure, our bruises and our cuts on our minds and souls aren’t on display the way they are with our bodies, but they go deeper. They often scar badly, and take much longer to heal.

But they still heal. With more care, with more pain, but we heal. We’re made to be broken. We’re made to heal, and when we do, we bear the marks of injury as a reminder.

So I’m sometimes thankful to them, those people that pushed me, that cut me, that beat the shit out of me. They’ve left impressions unable to be forgotten, even if I wanted it so. They’ve made me this way, maybe even more than those that have never hurt me. They’ve shaped who I am, and they’ve helped give me this life that I love so much.

If you’ve ever hurt me — thank you. Chances are good that I’m over it, and I just smile to myself when I think of you now. Thanks for this scar.

You only have one life. Live it. Try to be happy with it. Especially when it seems the hardest.