How I learned to love my scars

In case you haven't guessed by now, I grew up in the country. And if you have ever walked beside me you know I'm not exactly graceful. I can fall down while sitting. It's a talent my mother and niece have as well. Life was especially trippy when I was going through growth spurts. In my family we tend to gain a lot chub before shooting up 3-12 inches in a day.

As a child that led to a lot of accidents. All of a sudden my feet were coming down where they should. My elbows would connect with door frames and spin me around. I would hit my head on things I had ducked under my entire life. One brilliant afternoon, long story short, I ended up with a deep puncture wound from a cow skull, a twisted ankle, and a large chunk torn out of my leg just below the knee. My mother was not happy about any of that, or my missing shoe, or the chunk of flesh I handed her. (I thought maybe the doctor would be able to sew it back in. I was young! Don't laugh.)

As a teenager that led to a lot of stretch marks. I developed breasts overnight and years later I developed hips. The burning pain from that sudden change made it very hard to walk. My legs ached, my knees hurt, and I couldn't keep my gravity centered and would trip or fall easily. In one moment I was able to smash my thumb open, slice my hand on a nail, turn, trip and twist my knee, slam my throat onto a stair tread, bite the tip of my tongue off, and impale my chest on a hidden piece of rusty rebar stuck in the ground. I could barely breathe, and couldn't say anything because both my tongue and throat were so damaged. Instead I pushed myself up off the ground with two bloody hands, dragging the rough ridges of the rebar over my ribs, spit out blood and a chunk of flesh, and barely stand on my messed up knee as blood started pouring out of my chest.

My poor parents knew I needed a doctor, I couldn't stop spitting blood or coughing, but they weren't sure if it would be best to call an ambulance (which could take longer but would bring oxygen) or drive me in because I had already soaked through my shirt and two hand towels. Not being able to speak I didn't have much say. So I tried to wash the blood out of my shirt. It was my first silk shirt and I hoped it was salvageable. The blood came out but the hole left in it was too large. Mom stopped me. Dad shook his head. They grabbed some extra towels to staunch the blood and pushed me in the car. After the ER nurse checked my throat and determined that wasn't going to kill me they did something else I seriously don't remember and told me I had a serious concussion as well. Not my first, and certainly not my last. I got oxygen and was sent for x-rays. Nurses kept coming down to do other things but by then I was sleepy, and puking, so I can't remember what they were. I do remember them pulling the loose broken shard of my rib out of my body though. And the nurses making stupid comments about me not currently wearing a bra. It had also been ripped apart by the rebar and they were actually pulling pieces of it out of my wound.

Now you might think this is a particularly gruesome story. And it kind of is. But it's MY story. And every time someone new, or one of my more forgetful friends, sees my giant gnarled scar I get to tell that story. And explain how an underwire bra saved my klutzy life.

And every time someone sees the scar on my right leg I get to tell them how even when you are running from men with guns you should still be more careful of the barbwire fence.

And when they see the scar on my right leg I get to tell them how my first Girl Scout troop in Bowling Green KY heard that I was moving so they all pitched in and got me a doll and I was so happy I skipped out into the parking lot and tripped. The gravel tore up my knee real bad but my face and chest landed on the doll and it protected me.

And when they see the thick straight scar on my right hand I can tell them the story of my friend's brother that was on the wrong meds as a teenager and he stabbed me in the hand with a paring knife because I made him stop abusing his mom.

My life adventures have written story blurbs on my flesh, in white, purple, and tan. You can't see all of them very well. The scar above my eye that taught me that even the nicest dog will bite is so old and faded even I barely remember it is there. And the dart that pierced my cheek and pricked my tongue healed so small and well it didn't leave a scar on my face. But I still know how to be careful with dogs and I still know how fun it is to blow air out of your cheek with your mouth closed.

I have scars on my face, on my shoulders, on my arms, my breasts, my hands, my chest, my back, my butt, my legs, my vagina, my feet and more than a few on my soul.

Growing up I kept hearing how I should be more careful. Because the scars would make me ugly. And I would hate them as I got older.

I was a tomboy so I didn't care if I was ugly or pretty. But when I was a teen, after the hole in my chest started to heal into a lumpy scar and the stretch marks on my hips shone a bright white, I started to wonder if I should care.

Did they make me ugly?

I stared at myself in the mirror. I stared at my legs. I stared at my arms. I constantly checked the scar under my left breast to see how bad it would be. I never got stitches in it because everything else took so long that once the doctor said we could leave we just left. It wasn't until I was crawling into bed as the sun came up that I saw that there were no stitches. So it healed badly. Very badly. I had to go in to my regular doctor and he trimmed some pieces off it healed so badly. And I had to wear a bulky bandage to high school so everyone stared. And a few people asked what was up with it. And I told them. And they flinched and sympathized. But that was it.

And it wasn't until I was almost completely healed and I saw that it was going to be a huge nasty scar that I realized. I didn't care.

I didn't care about the giant scars on my legs. I didn't care about the thin scars on my back. I didn't care about the white marks on my arms. Or any of the rest of it.

If people thought that I was ugly because of the life I had led, the life that was writ into my flesh, how could they think that I, the person inside that flesh, was pretty? Because I had been through all of those things and the memories wouldn't be erased even after the scars faded.

And that's when I fell in love with my scars. They were my story, my life, my warning, and my litmus test. If you can't handle the scars, you can't handle the real me.