I'm a person with scars. Loads of 'em. Take one look at my scratched arms or skidded knees or bruised legs and you'll see years of falls, missteps, and trips, both physical and emotional. The best people, in my opinion, are the ones who are covered in scars -- the ones you can see from the onset, and the ones that take a little longer to uncover. Maybe it's something as simple as falling off a bike in kindergarten so that now the skin around the left knee is shaped like a crescent moon. Or maybe it's something darker, more intense, that takes a while longer to uncover, layer by layer. Either way, the scars are there for a reason.

Hiding our scars is one of our greatest defense mechanisms as human beings. Sometimes they're big. They're almost always ugly. And they're all too easy to cover up. With the right combination of concealer and a perfectly placed piece of clothing, no one has to know about that embarrassing wipeout at your eighth grade graduation or the gut-wrenching details of your latest breakup with the guy all your friends warned you about.

But what do you really gain by hiding all those scars? You put on a happy face, wipe away the remnants of any hardship, and pretend as though everything is rainbows and sunshine. At the end of the day, does all of this pretending get you anywhere? Do you feel better, more fulfilled, more whole?

Putting on this facade for the world helps no one and nothing. You waste precious hours and days and weeks creating this persona of this perfectly happy, blemish-free person, but is anyone perfectly happy or blemish-free? The short answer: no. Absolutely not. Not one person. No matter how polished or put together or content someone appears on the outside, there are layers upon layers that are hidden way underneath that no one gets to see. Just because you can't see someone else's scars sure as hell doesn't mean they don't have any. It just means they've become skilled at hiding them.

What exactly do you gain by hiding those scars? They make us human. They make us real. They make us who we are. Stitch those scars together rather than wipe them away and you realize they are the makings of your story. You realize that without them, you wouldn't be who you are. You might have constructed this person who's light and easy, and also, at the end of the day, totally superficial.

It took me a long time to realize how important it is to embrace your scars. Revel in them. Devote monuments to them if that's the kinda thing you're into. Under no circumstances should you ever be ashamed of them or try to run from them. Life is not a game of hide and seek. Chances are, the next person you meet has scars just as deep and unnerving as your own. If the next person you meet is me, they're bound to be.