My first burn...

Growing up, I always had a queer fascination with fire.  Not the kind that ever worried my parents so much they thought I had a problem, mostly just the kind that every little kid with wonder in their eyes had.  I can remember on many occasions in my teenage years my parents would tell me to stop playing around with fire.  I was raised in a family of smokers, and although I never became one myself, there was always a lighter or matches hanging somewhere to be found in the house.  My hands were like magnets to them.

I can remember exactly my first "burn".  I was 12 and playing with a lighter and a straw leftover from a McDonald's cup that we had gotten earlier in the day.  Straws seemed to burn so interestingly because of how the plastic so easily shrunk once heat got anywhere near it.  As I was holding it up to watch it drip off the flame, a small piece of hot liquid plastic fell onto my inner left thigh.  The pain from the quarter-inch area of melted flesh was so intense I quickly dropped the lighter and straw and rubbed what was left of the plastic off of my leg.  That mark is obviously still there on my leg and although it has healed with time the memory of that day and what it felt like will never go away. 

My first burn, as you know since you are reading this, would not be my last.  And as I get older, I realize physical burns obvioulsy hurt yet only for awhile.  It's the burn that affects me mentally every day as I stuggle to accept what hand I was dealt and how each day I regain the strength to get up, face reality, and love myself for who I am.