Adultery Saturdays: A Whole New Take On What It Means To Be Callous

My feet belong to a very broad, very masculine, hair-encrusted caveman.

 
Wide and absurdly flat, I’m relatively sure they’d make loud and vaguely accosting slapping sounds if I ran barefoot on concrete. The soles that should be so delicate, soft, and ready to make their appearance in a stunning pair of six-inch stilettos are padded with a thick layer of yellowed callouses–a barrier against heaping piles of summers walking on white hot sands, autumns spent striding barefoot over stacks of tangled and fallen leaves, winters wet and drying out by the fire, and springs picking my way over cold riverbeds.
 
And as for my heels? My heels are thick and dry, dirt packed into the cracks that spindle out like lines on a shattered sheet of glass.
 

But ugly and worn, aching and caked, my feet are durable, resilient, and strong.

 
Because being exposed to the same elements over and over, year after year, they’ve learned their weak points and adapted. They’ve memorized the fleeting feeling of seashells tumbled to sand, jagged edges poking into the thin skin covering the bottom of my gentle, sloping arches. They’ve noted the not-so-pleasant sting of hot hardwood stamping itself into the soles of my feet as I ran repeatedly across my grandparents’ deck, chasing after the dog who was chasing after my niece who had fisted four hot dogs and taken off squealing.
 
My feet defend themselves against danger, have put up a thick guard between themselves and the ground.
 
Yet there’s something to be said for soaking the weathered patches in huge, bubbly suds. For sloughing away the roughness. For stripping down to the bare strips of soft skin. (Just as there’s something to be said for the slight pain of the pebbles on the bottom of a mountain stream and the way fine grit grinds into your toes.)
 
But the barriers build. The defenses get more difficult to disable. And shutting down, shutting others out, and shutting ourselves in feels natural, easy, and ever at the ready.
 

We all want to be tough.

 
We want to walk across the scathing surface of the sun without an semblance of a seer, our layers of skin perfectly pristine in their hardened strength. We strive to remain unmarked by monumental adventures, callous to relationship catastrophes, and immune to setbacks, let downs, and failures.
 
And while it’s easier to erase the sharp stabs from the pointed corners of smashed shells, it’s important to strip down, breathe deep, and dive in.
 
Because it’s not about avoiding those tears between our toes, the abrasions on our ankles and the deep, resounding ache in the arches our our feet. It’s about embracing them. Hauling ass into the Atlantic Ocean every year like ticking & tocking clockwork, not in spite of that scar that trims our left leg from a jellyfish sting from the summer we turned twenty-three, but because of.
 
As my six year-old little sister has precociously proclaimed while battling an intense splinter situation, “I don’t like anything that causes me pain,” but it’s that pain that reminds us where we’ve been. It reminds us what we’ve been through. And it reminds us where we’re capable of going.
 
Spoiler alert? Everywhere.
 
 

What the weirdest scar you have? Regale the tale in the comments below!

• About
• Latest Posts

Jessica Manuszak

Jess is a rebel with a cause, (and also lots of cardigans), who maniacally fled from college with a few degrees in creative writing tucked securely under her right arm. After sprinting away from corporate America so fast you'd think her ass was ablaze with a fire perfect for roasting s'mores, she spends her time mainlining gin-soaked olives, jumping into rivers with extreme reckless abandon, and sleeping with the lights on after marathoning shows about ghosts. As the creative strategist, lead project manager, and writer of Adultery here at TMF, she's a horse of a different color, (which mostly makes her want to knock on a huge wooden door and insist on seeing the wizard).

Latest posts by Jessica Manuszak (see all)

• Adultery Saturdays: A Whole New Take On What It Means To Be Callous -
• Adultery Saturdays: When Elvis Played The Tuba, And Why You Should, Too -
• Adultery Saturdays: You Should Tell Success To Suck It–Here’s Why -