text, un: bellabelle

[doreimi]

You know...at one point I would've made a post like this anonymously. Not because I'm ashamed or anything, exactly, but because sometimes you just want to talk about things without your name attached, you know? So that it's not really about you, just about the advice you're looking for. Or because you don't want people to look at you differently after they hear about it.

I guess it's because it's been so hot lately that it got me thinking about it. And also because of Cordis, a little. Sometimes I get wings for Cordis, and then all of a sudden my wardrobe gets pretty limited when it comes to...that. But anyway.

Really what I wanted to ask is —

For people who have scars, how do you think about them? Like are they a part of your identity now, or do they still bother you? Do they feel wrong when you look at them? And — if you are okay with them, did you do something to make yourself more okay with them? Or are you just kind of...never going to be okay with them, no matter what?

I have some. I think they're ugly, and hard to look at, and I try to keep them covered up so that they won't bother people who might see them. I guess really what I'm wondering is whether that's a feeling that's ever likely to change.

It's just something that's been on my mind more and more lately, is all.

Comments

un: 7FFF00

[hierophany]

I'll be honest, I havn't had time to consider my own scars much yet. I'm fortunate - all but one can be covered with cosmetics fairly easily and the last one with clothing.

But you are asking the wrong question, I think. People are always going to experience a response to seeing something that doesn't look right. And your being concerned about that response has very little to do with any scars and far more to do with feeling responsible for making people uncomfortable. The former isn't going to change. The latter might, but caring about people's comfort less is not in itself a change for the better.

Perhaps it might be more appropriate to ask if that part of your body will truly feel like yours again. So that people seeing it would see a part of you and not a part of something horrible.

Or perhaps I am projecting. That is entirely possible.

[doreimi]

That's how mine are, too. They're on my back, so it's pretty easy to cover them up, except when I get wings and they get in the way.

Anyway, I think...

I don't know. What that guy did to me is a part of me whether I like it or not, but I don't think I really want it to be.

[hierophany]

I don't have an answer either. Apologies if you were hoping for one.

I think what I'm hoping for is that eventually it ceases to be a thing that someone did and becomes just a thing that happened. It's troubling for a part of me to belong to someone I dislike in that way. Like they just put a flag on it and said that it was theirs now. I'm not the fucking moon.

That's the problem, at least for me. If someone sees the scars, they're seeing something that he decided was his. Part of him. And I don't want to make people have to look at him. I think it would be easier to let people see them if he weren't involved.

It's unrealistic to expect to be able to deny what happened, but it would be nice to cut him out of the story.

[doreimi]

...You know, that's actually a really good way of putting it? Like they put a flag on it and claimed it for themselves. Like there's still something of you that belongs to them, just because they took it.

Was it someone you knew? The person who did it to you, I mean. Did you know him before he did it?

[hierophany]

I did. I want to say it's complicated, but it really isn't. He's a horrible person, I was an idiot who eventually saw sense, we were trying to kill each other. I don't really resent him hurting me. I would have killed him if he didn't.

The thing is, I know he didn't hurt me. 'Hurt' requires that you see what you're hurting as a person. He broke a thing. A thing he thought was always his to break.