Scars

* Possible trigger warning *

Please only continue to read if you find yourself in an emotionally healthy state. i don’t want to trigger or hurt anyone by all means.

Scars, we all have them. Emotional wounds. A hurt hidden deep inside, secretive even? Or maybe a wound more on the surface, you’ve had hours and hours of talking about it in therapy/counseling. Some of us have physical scars as well. Maybe you got burned sometime, or tripped over and it left a mark. Maybe you were ill and had to have surgery. Although it was meant to help you heal, it also left a scar, a reminder of what you’ve been through in order to receive healing.

i guess we all have scars, yet still it remains a topic often swept under a rug. People are uncomfortable to speak up about their own scars and reluctant to ask about other people’s scars. Scars are gossiped about, made fun of, or a reason to keep your distance. They are often hidden, and for a reason.

Still, i want to speak up. Without showing my scars right now i want to speak up about the reason behind them. i have scars. Lots of them. And i too am cautious about them and try to hide them as best i can. Yet at the same time i find myself questioning what message i’m sending into this world by hiding them and not showing the truth about my scars. To be honest i wish there was a way to only make them visible for people above a certain age and in a certain head space. i don’t want kids to understand the reason behind my scars and i don’t want other people struggling the way i did that caused those scars, to feel like physical pain would be the answer to their inner turmoil and pain.

So yeah, here’s a bit of the background of my scars. Maybe this is just a way of preparing the world for the scars that i carry, for when the time comes i’m ready to not cover them up anymore. i don’t know. But i do hope this is me raising awareness about the reality of scars and that it isn’t something we should judge about. We can’t judge a book by its cover. So why should we judge people by their looks and their marks? It is okay not to understand. Yet it is not okay to assume.

i have different scars. Emotional wounds, that may or may not have healed yet. i have physical scars from little accidents i had growing up. And i also have some scars from self-harm. This means that i caused myself to hurt physically in a way that was damaging to my body. Some of those wounds did heal almost fully. Some of them did leave an ugly mark. Now do i hear a lot of different assumptions about why people would hurt themselves. And to be honest there may be loads of different reasons and i may not even know all of the possible reasons to want to hurt yourself.

However keep in mind that this is my story and that if you come across someone who has some scars, even scars from self-injury, it could be because of a whole different reason.

So here goes my story… (i’m a bit nervous, i must say).

i guess that maybe the most important reason for me was that i was hurting so deeply inside, that i needed something visible to understand what was going on emotionally. i was having so many emotional wounds that i had no solution to. No way of knowing how they would ever heal. So i turned to self-harm as a way of taking control. With self-harm i could see the hurt, feel the hurt, and most importantly understand why i was hurting. And i also could follow the process of healing. i could take care of the wounds, and see how they were improving.

Also me hurting myself would help me silence the emotional pain for a while. The sharper the pain, the softer and smaller my inner distress would seem. Yes, i know it was still the same, but i was distracted for awhile.

i guess maybe it is kinda the same way as heaving surgery. When someone is ill there sometimes is surgery needed to help that person heal. Surgery is a good thing, it is supposed to help the patient, to resolve a problem. Yet there also may be an ugly scar remaining because of that surgery.

When i was hurting so badly inside, i needed some sort of emotional surgery as well. Therapy is supposed to do that and i have been having treatment for years. Yet it takes time. And maybe sometimes i got impatient, or literally did not have that time to be able to deal with the emotional wounds that were surfacing. And so i did what i think sometimes has been life-saving, i tried to do the “surgery” myself. By self-harming i tried to find a way to deal with the things that were going on.

i may not have been the best surgeon in the world. i may have done more (physical) damage than i did good, but it was something i needed at the time in order to get through the day.

Am i proud of what i have done? No (if i would be, i would not be so reluctant to write this and would not go into a lot of trouble to cover up my scars. Yes, it is trouble when it is 30°Celcius and you are still wearing long sleeves and jeans). Am i ashamed? Yes, a bit. i know deep down in my core that i did not have a choice back then. At the time there was no other way to deal with the hurt and pain. And i know there may come a moment where i would not know another way than to hurt myself again. i am 100% sure that self-harm is part of the reason that i’m still here. If i would have known a better way to cope, i would have definitely made that choice. But i did not, and now it’s up to me to deal with the consequences. The scars are real. They are not something i can deny. Just as i can not deny the emotional wounds any longer. But i hope there comes a time when i will be able to see how both my physical and emotional scars found healing. And that i can turn this mess into a message of hope and love and freedom in Jesus. i still have a long way to go, but maybe i will get there. One step at a time. One healed scar at a time. One breath at a time.

 Thank you for reading this.

i am sorry if i shocked you with my honesty.

i am sorry if i did mistakenly forget a very important detail of my story.

And i am sorry if you have to deal with physical and emotional scars yourself and don’t see the end of the tunnel, just yet.

Please keep holding on. Please know that ultimately self-harm is not an answer. Please keep reaching out for help and please know that i want to be here for you.

For when you can use some encouraging songs on this topic…

i love the following songs:

What scars are for – Mandisa

Scars – Jonny Diaz

Skin – Sixx A.M.