Scars
Photo by Jessica Caisse
By the time you read this entry, I will be in India volunteering at an orphanage in New Delhi. If you’re here through LiLu’s TMI Thursday, Hi, Hello. This story is a personal journey. It is a vulnerable one. And I will be back on February 8th to let you know how my journey to India went; blogging from a new place in Asia. The rest of 2010 will be spent in the Philippines. Hope you’ll stick around to read my accounts in different cultures.
These scars measure me. Define me. Give me wings like I am reborn or stones to drown me.
I’d like to say they have some amazing story behind them, but not really. I was nine years old when I got the chicken pox, and I itched the itchy spots. I was compulsive. I was impulsive. Whatever. It just itched. And no one told me I shouldn’t scratch.
When I realized the three most sensitive spots became permanent I was mortified. One on my chest, one on my left shoulder, and the biggest one on my upper back. Countless times I recounted in my notebook journals. Me, age 11. No one will ever love me! I wrote. God, how can anyone love someone so ugly? God, if you’re there, why me!?
Such is the melodrama of prepubescent growing pains.
My parents encouraged me to get them removed. A particularly mortifying visit to the doctor told me otherwise. No way was I going to trust the doc. No way in hell. He took one look at me, one look at them, and said “yeah, they’re ugly”.
Fuck you.
11 year old impressionable psyche. My face burned a deep red. I had my back toward him and I could feel his eyes digging into my skin. My eyes filled to tears. I just cried and cried. You might as well have told a fat girl “yeah, you’re fat.” I mean, do you have to tell me the obvious?
Fuck you.
Watch your manners, Floreta, Mom would say. Don’t use those words.
I didn’t get them removed because frankly, I’m a big wuss. I knew they involved painful cortisone shots to the scar tissue itself and I hated needles. The things I learned about these scars-these foreign invaders on my body-were that there were no guarantees of removing them successfully. They could actually get worse with treatment. No way was I going to risk something like that. No way in hell.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I guess I felt that this was my body, and I should learn to live with it. I mean, they happened for a reason, right? Everything happens for a reason… As tough as I knew it would be, I was going to love myself. I had to. There’s no turning back what happened. I was going to love myself and someone will love me too. I had to believe that. 13 year old psyche. I had to believe I was still lovable. God, how could I go on if I wasn’t? How could I be so shallow; how could anyone? And if they are, they don’t deserve me.
My parents kept telling me to get them “taken care of”. Did they not love me? Did they not accept me? Did they deserve me?
I cried some more. Cried for the perfect skin I will never have. Cried for the demons of self-acceptance that I couldn’t quite grasp.
I went all through high-school without dating. It was very hard for me to be so vulnerable to anyone, let alone naked. I grew very self-conscious. Never wearing sleeveless shirts, bathing suits, or anything strapless. I still don’t really. But I’m the closest to accepting myself as I’ll ever be.
My first boyfriend dumped me the day after he saw me naked and I had given him my first blow job. Perfect timing. And by perfect, I mean fucking lousy.
I cried for months. We only dated for 6 months and it took me that long or longer to get over him. He didn’t deserve my tears.
Being naked in front of men was a struggle for me. I was never comfortable or confident. By the time I settled into a long-term relationship-the one I’d be in for five years-I felt more at ease but still, I would try hard never to face my back to him. I was always conscious of where I was in proximity to where he was in proximity to where they were; my scars. I began to slowly accept them as part of me, yet I still had that mentality.
See, I decided back in middle school that these scars would be a test. A test for myself and a test for my lovers. I knew that while I didn’t feel strong now, it would help me become stronger later. If I wasn’t comfortable, then they weren’t right for me, and I wasn’t “ready” to love another because I still had work to do. And if they didn’t accept me? Of course they weren’t right for me. These scars were a physical measure of what everyone goes through: acceptance, love, comfort, finding “the one”. I’m not sure if I believe in “the one”, but I’m sure I believe in settling down with one. I convinced myself it’d be a good thing, because I would be that much more aware of an incongruous situation, and of how far I have come to be comfortable in my own skin.
As I get older, I continue to grow more comfortable in my own skin. I don’t know what it is, or how I got here. I’m by no means perfect, and my scars tell me so. But all I know is that each new lover feels more and more comfortable. The last man to see me naked, a month ago, was the most comfortable I’ve ever felt. I don’t know if it’s me. Or him. Or me and him combined. But I felt beautiful. And comfortable with my back turned towards him on the bed, and my sleepy eyes drifting to sleep with a slight smile on my face. That doesn’t mean he’s “the one”, or even one (I’m not jumping to bold conclusions), but it means I’m closer to truly accepting myself and my imperfections.
Today, my scars do not sink me; they give me wings like I am reborn. I choose to fly. Everything I do is because I want to be better. I want to respect myself, believe in myself, and most importantly, love myself. My scars aren’t something separate from me, they are a part of me. They grow and change as I grow and change. They mold to who I am. They tell stories of learning to love, and travail. And I am stronger because of it.
Five years ago, I would never have posed topless to photograph my scars, but at the tail end of 2009, I did. I am proud of how far I’ve come. And I’m sharing it with you now.
Today, I am the closest to ever loving myself since, well, ever. And I continue to journey into self-acceptance. I am a work in progress, we all are, but I am closer to finding “the one”; and she’s not something outside of me, but within my own self.
What scars do you have? How do you measure love?
