There was a time when my body was unharmed and had no trace of scars. When I could wear whatever my heart desires and not overthink what people might come up within their heads when they see a small perforation in my stomach and a small incision that has been raised over the years on my right breast.
I feel that my freckled face makes up for this as when people look at me in the sunlight, orange specks dance across my skin. They do not focus on what is dimly seen, they would rather look at what stands out. Those coral spots do their job. They are alright, everyone will tell me how much they love my freckles but I am still working on my relationship with them. I hope that one day I can come to admire them as much as the world does, but I feel as though that will not be soon.
I want to be able to celebrate these parts of myself, but I can’t because these scars will always be with me. The doctor says that he did me a favor placing the port so low, I can conceal that scar with a shirt, although it can never be too low unless I have no other choice but to let people see.
My stomach only reveals itself to me when I am not clothed, I try not to scare at it for long. Usually, this makes me annoyed, I want to be able to wear bikinis without feeling as though all eyes will be on the scar that came from my feeding tube. I know that most probably wouldn’t care, I was most likely just making a big deal out of nothing.
It’s so hard to feel as though the whole world isn’t watching you when you are a girl. It just seems like we have so much pressure placed upon our physical appearance nowadays. Everything has to be just perfect.
My long legs that are hidden by my short height climb up to my high waistline, everything that I wear has to be high waisted to cover up my hips that I don’t like. The question of people asking me “what was wrong” has always plagued me. They think that my eyes are trying to tell them something, that there was something wrong behind the emerald specs laced with hints of brown.
I have short lashes that barely grew back after chemotherapy. I have to salvage what I have and take extra care of my hair. It is a beautiful prize, something that I longed for ever since I lost it and am so happy to have it back again.
I have dyed it multiple times, trying to get the right color that I felt would suit me best with my new lease on life. I will never have the natural color that I used to have again, so I might as well have some fun with it. For years I posed as a blonde, I spent a good amount of time every month applying bleach to my dark roots when they would grow in. I had to make sure that no one could see that I was hiding behind this fake color, I would have my mom meticulously work on it so that it would look whole.
I just wanted to fit in, to be the best that I can be.
I still want to.