Growing up, I was very average. I was never really the center of attention and I never really stood out, and honestly, I liked it that way. I was perfectly content not getting looks and being the center of attention. My junior year of high school came to an end with me having surgery to remove a softball-sized tumor from my neck. While the surgery went well, the incision left a pretty thick, pink, two-inch scar between my collar bones. All of a sudden I went from blending in and looking normal and average to having a thick scar across my neck that was visible with most things I wore.
As someone who was a wallflower and was not use to looks and stares, getting all this attention in public was really weird and hard. I felt like people saw my scar and not me.
My first day back to school after surgery was one of the hardest school days I ever experienced. Instead of just walking past me like they always did, everyone, and I mean everyone, I passed in the halls took time to not look me in the face, but to look at the bandage across my neck. I thought these looks would eventually end once I took the bandage off and time passed, but they have gotten worse.
Now that I am in college, meeting new people who do not know my story, I get even more stares and looks. When I first meet someone they first look at my neck where my scar is, then they look me in the eyes, then they go back to looking at my scar. Sometimes I find when I am having a conversation with someone they are talking to my neck and not to me and sometimes I can feel people focusing on my scar when they think I do not notice. These constant looks from friends and strangers makes me feel like I am a zoo animal. I went from being a wallflower to having constant looks, and not because I was wearing a killer pair of boots.
It really sucks constantly having people see my scar and not me, but this experience really shows how focused our society is on vanity. Growing up, I always heard stories about people who were self-conscious about their appearance because they had a giant visible birthmark or scar. I never understood why people chose to cover up or let these stares affect them this much, but now that I have my own scar and story, I understand. It is not just that I feel like people look at my scar and not be, but I feel that they judge my scar. My scar is not pretty, I know that and I know that this ugly scar does not make me ugly, but sometimes when I constantly get odd looks from people around me, it makes me feel ugly, like the scar diminishes my beauty.
Whenever someone takes a significant amount of time to look at my scar, I have to remind myself that I am not my scar. The scar may be a part of me, but I am so much more than this two inch chunk of skin.
