Scars

"Cause we are beautiful no matter what they say

Yes, words won't bring us down, oh no

We are beautiful in every single way

Yes, words can't bring us down

Don't you bring me down today"

-Beautiful, Christina Aguilera

When you look in the mirror what do you see?  A nose?  Two eyes?  A mouth?  A couple ears?  Maybe some earrings?  Hair?  Makeup?  Glasses?  A blemish?  Some freckles?  A mole?  A beard?  If we moved on to the rest of the body what would you describe?  Legs?  Arms?  Chest?  Torso?  Back?  Is your self image positive?  I am one good looking son of a gun.  Is it negative?  If only I could change this one thing about me?  If  you could change one thing what would it be?  There was a time when I blissfully would have answered that I wouldn't change anything about myself.  Sadly, that was when I was five-years-old.  Too many people have been brutally honest with me and stronger than most things I've heard, I remember those things.  When I look in the mirror I am reminded that my nose is crooked, compliments of a boy in first grade, my ears are unshapely I was told by a boy in middle school, my eyes are a boring shade of blue a girl in high school told me, my chin is weak, a woman I met in elementary school told me, my eyebrows too bushy a boy in college once said, a girl in high school said my hair was frizzy and a bad color, my smile made me look chinese, a boy in fifth grade informed me, my stature not tall or thin enough to be a dancer I was told I forget when.  I would accept all of these with acceptance except I didn't ask for any of these opinions.  When I see myself I see these problems.  I see these parts of myself that I cannot change and sometimes it makes me sad.  It makes me sad because the first thing I notice about myself are these scars. 

I recently came into acquaintance with a young woman who has much the same problem as me- she only sees the imperfections in herself. I see her and I think that she is beautiful. I think she is one of the most beautiful women that I have ever known. I started to write this for her.

In addition to these emotional scars I now can boast physical ones as well.  Soon I will be going in for my fifth mole removal and biopsy.  It's a standard procedure, I remind myself constantly, for any mole that shows the qualities of skin cancer.  That doesn't mean it is skin cancer now, or even that it will be, but that it might be.  It's the possiblity that scares me.  It still distresses me when I meet people for the first time and the look at me.  I'm afraid that all they see are these scars on my face and arm and leg.  I'm afraid that they only see the imperfections that I know exist.  I'm afraid that people will not like me because of this.  I'm afraid they will not like me.  I'm afraid. 

As an excercise in proving myself wrong, in proving that I couldn't possibly be right about all these things, I took a poll of what people thought of me- not who I am, but my appearance, my looks, purely aesthetically, non emotionally.  I tried to be fair and ask women and men, including people who have never met me in person so they wouldn't be swayed by anything in my immediate personality.  I asked them two questions with the request for brutal honesty- 1) Do you think I am physically beautiful? 2) Why? 

As a form of science it probably required a more practical mindset than mine.  As a form of morale- I should've done this years ago.  Earlier I complained about my eyebrows, my eyes, my chin, my ears, my body, my hair, my height, and my smile.  Not one person mentioned my 5'3" as a problem and more than one thought it was ideal.  No one mentioned my eyebrows or my chin.  One guy said my ears were cute.  I had many people that loved my hair, someone said my feet were cute, numerous people loved eyes, my skin, my coloring, more than one (I blush to say) admired my figure, and almost everyone said how much they loved my smile.  And only one person said that I was not beautiful in the stereotypical form of beautiful.  Just think, I have been blaming all my problems on what my physical appearance was.  I blame every screwed up relationship on not being pretty enough, because maybe if I had been he would've stayed, or he would have tried harder.  Every job I didn't even consider that maybe I didn't get it because it wasn't right for me- instead it was because I wasn't pretty enough.  In the past I only ever saw myself as others saw me negatively.  Then the other day I remembered something I once said in college. 

When you come back to God after leaving, as I did, you bring your heart back to God, as a small child brings a painting to his mother.  He says to her, "it's not very beautiful, and it isn't as good as it could've been, but I tried, and I wanted it to be so beautiful for you."  When the Mother looks at her child's creation she doesn't see that it's sloppy, or that it's wet, or that he probably made a mess during its creation, or that she will have to look at that ugly think for months after he puts it on the refrigerator.  She sees it as beautiful as he intended it to be.  That's how God sees us as we come to him.  I'm not as beautiful as I was when He first gave my body and my soul to me, but I want to give it back to Him as beautiful as I can make it.  Maybe I want this because I am a vain, shallow girl and I like being pretty, or maybe it is because I want other people to see God when they look at me, or maybe it is because I know that when I go before my Father some day, He won't see how people have hurt me and He won't see the pain I've been through- He will see me as I am and He won't see my scars.