text: True, but not all scars are created equal. I've got a doozy on my right eyebrow like Jason Mamoa and I hate to think of how it'd look if I hadn't ended up in the ER on the most traumitizing day of my life. Many years ago, my good friend Fitz and I made an impromptu road trip to visit my brother in Tampa. Upon arriving, I was notified that my brother had been incarcerated earlier in the day. Luckily, I had a key, and I knew where he kept the Valiums. We found 20, so we decided, regretfully, to split them and make our way to Ybor City. In no time, we were buying strangers all the Everclear daiquiris they would willingly drink and matching them 1:1. I was an unwavering idiot at the time so afterwards, my friend and I attempted to drive home and got hopelessly lost. After about a half hour of wrecklessly swerving around blurry streets that I had never seen before and making absolutely no progress towards even departing Ybor, I could no longer hold my piss. I pulled over in a parking lot and told Fitz that I was going to piss around the corner. I guess I had been sitting long enough for the grain alcohol to catch up because I only made it about eight floundering steps before I faceplanted into the pavement. It was freezing outside so I had my hands in the pockets of my white hoodie - I didn't even come close to getting them out in time to help break my fall. Face first into a mucky water puddle of some random asphalt parking lot in the hood. I'm not sure how long I laid there but I somehow managed to eventually get myself up. I should've been (remained?) unconscious; I was definitely concussed. My formerly white hoodie was an appalling mix of brown sludge and the most blood I'd ever seen in my life. I made it back to the car a good while later. I opened the driver's side door to awaken my passed out companion. "Dude, look what I did," I slurred, pointing drunkenly at my bloody face and rust-colored hoodie. "You think that's bad?" he replied apathetically, "Look what I did!" Too drunk to attempt to vacate my passenger seat, Fitz had thoroughly pissed himself. We both laughed and drove home, as invincible fucktards in their early '20s are wont to do. I woke up the next afternoon to some chick or another I was fucking at the time shaking me violently while being significantly louder than my pounding head could comfortably abide. Apparently I was supposed to stay with her the night before and I had never showed, never called, and had been unreachable all day. So she just showed up at my house to find my head in a bloody ruin. She said she thought I was dead. Looking at my pillow, I wondered if I might actually be. Strange afterlife, I thought. I felt close to death anyway, but I had no idea what she was talking about. I remembered very little of the night before until I stumbled into the bathroom and literally saw after being completely fucking obliterated by Ivan Baranchyk staring back at me in the mirror. She demanded I go to the ER--immediately if not sooner--and after the initial shock wore off, I agreed with her. That was the day I discovered what true pain was, and also that everything I previously thought I knew about the subject was unforgivably wrong. So fucking wrong. The gaping wound had completely dried up and was pretty much scabbed over. Before they could stitch it up, that all had to be removed. The Verna lemon-sized lesion in the side of my head had to be reopened. I'll spare you the gory details but I want to at least mention that because of the alcohol still in my system or because the masochistic nurse wanted to teach me a hard lesson or for some other reason I can no longer remember, they couldn't use any local anesthetic. Fucking Christ I'm shuddering just thinking about it. What followed was an eternity of infernal cutting, scraping, and peeling. The nurse said I was the most difficult patient she had ever had, which is fitting because she inflicted more pain in me than I had ever known was possible. I was a sobbing, swearing, utter mess. I was lucky though, the doctor said I could've gone blind in that eye and that if they hadn't been able to stitch it because I had waited any longer or for whatever other reason, I would've looked undeniably similiar to round 3 Glass Joe for the rest of my life and never gotten laid again. Plus I totally should've bled out every drop of my emaciated blood in my sleep that night. The only reason I can tell this story is because of two women I can only vaguely remember the appearance of saving my life that day. Shoutout also to Jason Mamoa for making eyebrows scars great again. God I was such a fuckup. I'm gonna do everything possible to prevent my kid from following in my footsteps - incurring avoidable scars included.