My belly button is finally where it is supposed to be. Like a deflated balloon, the skin in my belly remains somewhat loose and there's a black line still diving the torso diagonally, but I think that overall this body doesn't seem as foreign to me anymore.
As I undress in front of the mirror, I almost recognize my old self, if it weren't for that deep line, red and shaped like a smile, at the lowest part of the abdomen, creating a fat pocket on top of it. The doctor said this fat pocket may never go away, as the scar tissue is tight from within. I know that to be true. Bikinis will never look the same. The belly shape will forever hold a grin.
Strangely, for someone who is used to slobber on anti-aging lotions and obsess about every pound, I don't hate this scar. I am actually amazed and proud of it. I draw a line on top of it with a finger and think, impressed, that a whole person came out of it. This whole person who is already sixteen pounds and already has opinions (he hates nap time).
I notice in the mirror that I collect a number of other scars, which tell a story and show me I am aging, which, for some strange reason, is pretty cool to realize.
UGLY SCAR # 1
My mother is dragging me to Sears for Christmas shopping (yes, we have Sears in Brazil) and I am three years old. She didn't want to leave me with a nanny because she didn't trust anyone with her child (a feeling I can appreciate now).
What she remembers: I let go of her hand in the escalator and its nails grab my knee by the end of it.
What I remember: a boy on the other escalator, the one going down, let his toy fall all the way to the first floor. I want to go retrieve it and turned around to descend the ascending escalator, letting go of my mother's hand, tripping on myself and falling on my knee. The escalator reached its end at the exact same moment and nibbled me.
What she remembers: she pulled me and yelled for help. A friend happened to be around and came quick.
What I remember: my mother pulls me and everything looks blurry because the water pouring from my eyes keeps me from seeing clearly. My white socks are red. My mom yells for help but no one comes for what it seemed like a long time.
What she remembers: our beige Volkswagen Beetle is so covered with blood by the passenger door that my dad goes pale at the sight of it when he arrives. I am in the emergency room getting stitched up.
What I remember: nurses and doctors strap me down to a table with my arms open like Jesus Christ (and during the csection this felt like deja vu) and hold my head so I don't see what they are doing.
What she remembers: I kept on crawling on the stitches, which made them heal ugly.
What I remember: crawling on my stitches, so they would heal ugly and make me look worldly. All the kids I knew were very impressed that I already had so many stitches and I wanted to keep impressing people with my scar.
UGLY SCAR #2
I am playing hide and seek in a Marina in Rio. It's night and I am running around from under a bush to a pier as boats and pier bop around with a wave, when I trip on a buoy and fall hard on the other knee, the one without a scar. I keep on running because I have to hide, and I do, behind a shack, where a boy finds me and steals a kiss. We are drunk and our parents don't know it. I am fifteen years old.
I ignore the blood and the pain until the next morning, when we are floating, anchored in an island. We are cleaning barnacles from underneath the boat with our snorkels on. I feel a sharp pain and look at my knee under the clear blue water. It is covered in puss and I should get out and treat it. I show it to the boy I kissed and he says salt water is good for it, thats it will make it heal faster. Now I know he didn't know shit. I look at my yellow knee under the water and notice that a sea turtle and a stingray are passing by, so I shrug away my pain and forget about it.
UGLY SCARS #3 AND #4
When I was a newlywed in my first marriage, a recipe attempt gone bad resulted in second degree burns with blisters the size of a thumb in one arm. An aloe vera plant kept them from becoming too horrid.
Fast forward to a few years later, I am placing a homemade pumpkin pie (which is a waste of calories when there is so much chocolate to be eaten in this world, if you ask me) as my last ditch effort to make that marriage work when my forearm touched the door of the oven. The entire liquid pie splashed all over the kitchen. An aloe vera plant again came to the rescue to keep those scars from getting out of control. Thank goodness for succulents.
I have found that both scars were products of one terrible mistake.
UGLY SCAR #5
As I landed from a jump, one of my figure skating blades cut the opposite leg as it untwisted from a spin. I didn't realized it had happened until I finished dancing and looked back to see the trail of blood I had left on the ice.
UGLY SCAR #6
It's eleven o'clock at night and I have finally finished moving into my own new place and am standing in front of my brand new refrigerator, in awe. It's a simple refrigerator, and it is empty, but it is humming and it is mine, all mine.
The dividers from the inside of the refrigerator are still attached to one another by a plastic wrap. I decide that I need to separate them, just because. I want to look at my new refrigerator and appreciate the smell of freedom.
With a knife (because no scissors can be found) I attempt to cut the cord, and when I am successful, my other hand gets in the way, cutting my thumb in half.
I don't react right away because, as a doctor would later tell me, I cut through a nerve, but I feel dizzy.
I wake up a boyfriend I had at the time, who was a self centered son of a bitch (you can tell we parted in good terms), who picks me up and takes me to a hospital, drops me off and leaves, saying he can't stay because he needs to sleep. With that he becomes an ex-boyfriend and I can finally smell that freedom.
UGLY SCAR #7
I have purchased a ball gown I can't afford and make up I don't need in order to go to the Marine Corps ball with my new boyfriend (now husband) when I notice something is protruding at my upper back.
I can't go to a ball looking like I have horn coming out of me, so I have a dermatologist take it out. The doctor promises me it is a benign growth and that the scar will be small, but as he is working on me, while I am laying facing the floor, he says, "hummmm..." which is something no doctor should ever say during an operation, in my humble opinion.
Then he proceeds to let me know that the scar will be more like three inches long because the growth is in fact an iceberg. When he is done with me he shows me something yucky and hard, the size and looks of a walnut, right before it is sent to a lab, along with other odd moles he shaved from my belly.
I look pretty at the ball, but have a large bandaid in my back and can't relax about what it could be growing underneath it.
The results came back negative.
UGLY SCAR #8
Baby's first picture:
What kind of stories do your scars tell?
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