You want to navel gaze? Well, this is how I do it

It is fair to say I am not very light-coloured (pardon the pun, had to be done). On top of having relatively dark skin I am also marked here and there like a Swiss cheese with little scars and bruises. When I was a teenager I used to wonder why I didn't have the luminous skin tone that all my peers seemed to acquire effortlessly; then in 2001 I met my old flatmate who introduced me to foaming cleanser, toner and lotion. While my face has yet to shine with the light of flawless perfection I think the skin on it is nicer now than that of my feet.

But I digress. The real reason why I write is because I want to catalogue my scars. I have a lot of scars. Not lots of humungous ones, just lots of little ones. And I'm not going over my scars because it is something amazing to do; it is just easier to write about this than what is really, truly keeping me up at this time of night.

I divide them into the following categories: those which are the result of self-inflicted stupidity and those that came about through no fault of my own, destiny. The list of scars I have incurred through self-inflicted stupidity is as follows - the ones on my legs which I got from scaling up the stone lions in Trafalgar Square (it seemed like a good idea at the time); the ones on my knees, acquired as a result of falling straight through a thorny rose bush; the one on my lip marks the tasting of a piece of pasta from a boiling pot; the tiny one around my laughter line that my cousin gave me when I was a toddler (his upper cut to my face was most probably provoked); the ones I got from picking at my measles even though my mum told me not to; the one on my ankle representing the deep cut I got from walking into (rather than onto) the steps of a podium during a drunken Christmas party.

The list of scars I was destined to have is not as long, it seems - the ones gained from the sore wounds of allergic reactions to mosquito bites; the ones that are the result of surgery on my heel; the one I got from falling off a bike as a teenager that healed badly in the humid summer; the one that people keep saying looks like a cigarette burn on my hand as a result of a dog attacking me. I'm sure there are some more, but at this point, I forget the rest and besides it seems a sufficient enough record of some of the more salient scars I have.

Wounds heal, but they leave a scar. If the scar is small enough then it's not too much of a problem. But what if you get a really big scar? Then what? I don't know, I haven't received a really big wound yet. Would it make a difference to the scar if it was a result of self-inflicted stupidity or destiny? Judging from my scars, I'd say, a scar is a scar, no matter what you call it, and you don't ever think they're great souvenirs.