Thursday, 26 April 2012

BEDA - Day Twenty-Six


This weekend my Dad gave me a sample of Palmer’s Coco butter which is said to reduce the appearance of scars. I think that now is a good time to write about my scars. For those of you who don’t know, or haven’t realized, I have scars on 100 percent of my body. It’s not something that I talk about a lot, but I feel like writing about it now.

When I was 18 months old I got the chicken pox. Most people think that the chicken pox aren’t really a big deal, you spend some time with red blotches on your skin trying not itch them, but for me it was a huge deal. I had an extreme case, I was in the hospital for two weeks and they didn’t know if I would die or have brain damage, and I am now in medical journals. My Mom told me that I was pretty vacant for those two weeks, I didn’t do anything except lie there, she told me that one day when she shook a rattle at me and I smiled was the first day she that she knew that I’d be OK. I don’t remember any of this time of my life, but my Mom tells me that when the chicken pox scabbed over it was like Rice Crispy’s were falling off me every time someone picked me up. I’m glad that I don’t remember what I went through, but I know that those weeks were the ones that made me who I am today.

People often talk about the chicken pox like they are nothing to really worry about, and I hate that. People make fun of the fact that there is now a chicken pox vaccine, but I think that it is a great thing! The vaccine doesn’t prevent the chicken pox, but it makes it so that no child ever has to go through what I went through. I think that a parent would be stupid if they didn’t vaccinate their child against chicken pox, I know that my Mom has said that if they would have had the vaccine when my brother and I were kids she would have done it. I’m fine, but who is to say that someone couldn’t die.

The other thing that sometimes gets to me is when people talk about their scars. People will count scars and tell stories about how they got them, but the thing that really gets me is when people complain about their scars. Nothing bugs me more then when some person says something about some ugly scar they have somewhere on their body, honestly, I want to smack them. I always feel like people don’t have the right to complain about something like scars. You might think that is selfish of me because I have the most scars ever, but the thing is that I don’t want to complain about my scars. My scars are a part of who I am, and I believe that there are so many other more important things that people can complain about then the very few scars they have. Whenever people bring up scars in front of me I just sit back to see where it is going, and when they start to complain about them in way that is ridiculous I look at them and say “really”? I hope that they clue in to what I am getting at, and sometimes they do, but usually I just end up shaking my head at them.

When I was kid I was sometimes bothered by the fact that I looked different from everyone else. I often would have kids come up to me on the playground and ask what was wrong with my face, sometimes my friends would defend me with “nothing, you idiot”, but most of the time I just felt bad about it. Just like any other kid, I didn’t want to be different. My friends growing up never treated me different, they knew what my scars where and the liked me anyway. The kids in my grade were so used to how I looked that it never really became a problem, and I am go grateful for that because by the time I got to high school my scars weren’t really a big deal anymore. I made new friends in high school and when I trusted them enough I told them about my scars, and no one made me feel bad about them. Everyone accepted me for who I am, and I feel really lucky to have the friends that I did.

Growing up in the way I did, with the people that I did, made it easier on me. I rarely ever think about my scars, and most days I forget that even have them. My scars are a part of who I am, but they are only a part. Sometimes I wonder about what people think when they first meet me because it is obvious that I have scars, but I never worry about it. If someone doesn’t like me because I have scars then that is their problem.

I am happy with the way I look, and I wouldn’t trade in my scars for perfect skin any day.  Because of my scars I know that I am fighter who can win, and I know that I am unique. I have never met someone else who is scarred in the way that I am, and it is cool to think that I am the only person who looks like me. I know that I was made this way for a reason, and I’m not going to mess with it.

No comments:

Post a Comment