Growing up, I was a slightly above average accident-prone child. Not enough to warrant concern, but enough of a klutz to be a hazard to myself and others. My lack of grace was originally contributed to my inability to coordinate my ever-growing spindly limbs. However, as I grew into my body, my klutziness seemed to grow more into me.
As a child, I seemed to learn the hard way that what went up must also come down. I was constantly tripping over flat surfaces and untied shoelaces. These incidents often involved minimal damage, but every now and then my inability to walk along flat surfaces would warrant enough harm that tears were had and a plethora of Neosporin and Band-Aids were applied to knees and elbows.
As a child, it never occurred to me that those deep red scrapes would do anything but heal. They were nothing more than scabs that I had to try and refrain from picking. The slightly darker-than-skin-tone smudges that would sometimes remain long after the scrape had healed were not given a second thought. They would fade if they wouldn’t. I couldn’t have cared less.
It wasn’t until college that I began to regard the scars painted upon my body with slight disdain. The spark that lit my fire of insecurity was as insignificant as they come. It all started with a simple statement by a girl I can’t even remember the name of.
It was during freshman year and I honestly couldn’t tell you how I met the girl or why we were talking. I do remember, however, her squinting at the center of my face and bluntly asking “have you ever broken your nose?” I was slightly startled by the shift in conversation and it took me a second to respond.
“Yeah, in like third grade. Why?” I responded tentatively.
“Oh, I could tell. Your nose is just kind of crooked."
In the moment, I laughed it off and quickly changed the topic, but when I returned back to my dorm room, I spent longer than usual staring in the mirror at my slightly off-center nose. The break happened when I was eight years old and had been pegged in the face with a Frisbee. It didn’t swell horribly, so my family wrote it off as a mere bruise. I never got it looked at by a doctor, so I never had the bone reset.
It wasn’t until five years later when I received a CAT scan for a nasty head bump that I was informed I had not only broken my nose but deviated my septum as well. I had never really thought of my nose as noticeably crooked, but that afternoon as I stared at my reflection, I saw the small bump and slight curve of my nose to the left. This girl, unbeknownst to her, had opened up my eyes to one of my many imperfections.
It’s kind of funny how once you see something you can never really un-see it. From that point on, I always viewed my nose as crooked. Whenever I looked in the mirror, a small feature I never put much thought into before was now all I saw. This awareness brought out something inside me I didn’t know I possessed.
I began to see small imperfections spattered all over my body. The scar below my lower lip somehow looked more prominent. The scars on my knees stood out like red stains on a white sheet. The small, rough gooseflesh bumps on my arms were highlighted by the moles and freckles spattered along my skin. A birthmark on my thigh became a mark of shame.
Imperfection after imperfection, I slowly picked myself apart. I picked and picked at the marks on my flesh until the reflection in the mirror was no more than a list of mistakes. It consumed me. A constant reminder that no matter how much I tried, I would never be perfect, inside or out.
Looking back, I can’t really pinpoint a specific moment when I stopped tearing myself apart. There was no magical moment of self-realization. Slowly I just began to accept my flaws. Maybe because I spent so much damn time staring at them. It took time. I didn’t just suddenly look into the mirror one day and declare “I’m beautiful despite my imperfections.” I just started to see them as a part of myself.
I started looking at the scar on my face as a reminder of the time I bit through my lip during beginner swimming lessons and how despite that I still found a passion for the water. The long scar on my shin and the numerous smudges on my knees: a symbol of the time I spent biking and running outside during my childhood. The freckles on my skin: a reminder of summer days spent at the beach. The birthmark on my thigh: a connection to my mother, who has a similar one to mine. The circular burn mark on my calf: a reminder of how truly awful I am with a curling iron, just like the long line on my ankle is a testament to my original discoordination with a shaving razor. My crooked nose: a funny story of “I told you so” to my family who didn’t believe I had actually broken my nose.
I stopped viewing the marks painted on my body as the mistakes on a canvas but rather the features that make the painting more interesting. I have a deep appreciation for these small scars. They tell the story of who I am. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without all the joy, pain, and lessons they have brought me. So now, whenever the story of my broken nose resurfaces and a kind soul reminds me that I could always have surgery to get it fixed, I simply nod and think to myself “why re-break something that wasn’t really broken in the first place?”
