posted on Jul, 19 2010 @ 06:24 AM
I don't think there is much of any place on me that doesn't have a scar, from head to toe. I was burned when I was a baby, to what was the
equivalent of about 60% of my body.
What was not burned was harvested for tissue for skin grafts. Since it happened when I was a baby, the scars are mostly not noticeable except on my
neck and side of my face and some on my arm where I have contractures.
While burns do not stretch as a child grows, I underwent a total of 32 plastic surgery proceedures throughout my childhood all the way to the age of
17. Also, I have tons of stretch marks where the rest of my skin did stretch to compensate. Some stretch marks that are a finger width thick or more.
I was then in a serious car accident when I was a young adult which resulted in serious back injuries that are now being treated with spine
surgeries.
Then there are variious other surgeries a lot of people have - gall bladder, etc.
Scars, in my case, had a huge amount to do with forming the person that I am. Growing up as I did, I learned to be tolerant of people with handicaps
as a child - I had no choice. I was ridiculed and teased and mentally tortured for something I was helpless to prevent. I learned at a very young age
how to hate and how to deal with anger and rage. I spent a lot of time alone, pitying myself.
I can say in retrospect, that who I am today - a person that I am very proud to be - is largely due to the incidents that I suffered and survived. In
the end, I would not trade it back, if I could. Most certainly, I would like to know how it feels to be "normal", because this is all I have ever
known. But, I would not change it because I may not be the same person if I did, and I really, really love the me I am.
I learned deep compassion, tolerances I do not see in even some adults. I learned a lot. When people say they understand things about handicaps and
they do not have one, I can honestly say they really do not.
Even as a child I could empathize with people in wheelchairs, but I still felt a certain thankfulness - that was really now more a lack of
understanding. It was not until I became disabled, unable to hardly walk, that I truly understood.
We take it all for granted. Simply having the ability to walk to the door and down the steps to the mailbox. The simplest of things, brushing your own
hair. Looking down at a book, leaning back and looking at the sky. Until you loose those things, you don't even realize you have them.
Just in this thread alone, you can go back and see posts where people "worried" about their scars, how people judged them, and what others might
think or say. They try to hide them, conceal them, treat them because they are ashamed they have ruined their "pristine" skin.
When someone like me sees posts like that, they come off as being petty and self absorbed, and shallow. I want to scream, "Do you knot see how
insignificant it is?" But alas, we all have our own lessons to learn, and I am certainly not anyones' teacher.
The last time I had spine surgery on my neck, the Dr. was explaining to me how he would try to hide the scar in my burns. I just laughed and said,
"Look at me. Do you really think one more scar is going to matter to me? I don't care where it is as long as you fix my neck!"
Somehow, when you get to a point like that in your life, you are free in a very real sense. Free because worrying yourself sick over something which
you have no control is a total waste of energy, and is really about being self involved and self absorbed.
When it comes to the point of either I have a scar and can walk again, or no scar and stuck in a wheelchair, which do you think I would choose? I
wouldn't care if it ran down the center of my face, and I would care even less what anyone else thought, as long as I could walk again.
All I can say is, there is that saying that no matter how bad you have it, someone else will always have it worse. But, it isn't about measuring
e-peens, or e-scars, if you will, it is about where has it brought you in the end. Did you take the opportunity from whatever happened to try to make
a better you? Not in the physical, but the person inside?
If so, then wear it proudly, like a badge. You should never feel shame over a scar, no matter where it is, or how you got it. And stop buying the scar
gels, it is a rip off on the gullible and self absorbed.