On Making Peace With All 43 Of My Scars

23 on my right leg.
20 on my left.
43 scars in total.

Yes, I took a moment to count them all; the small, the big, the darker circles and the lighter scratches and in total there are 43. For as long as I could remember, I never had a scar on my leg. When I refer to “a,” I mean a scar in singular. It has always been a constellation of them spread across due to my skin condition and not even all the tree oil in the world could change that.

Regardless of eczema or not, there have been more than 43 comments about them.

More than 43 times someone has said something behind closed doors.
More than 43 times their eyes did a double take.
More than 43 people wondered where I got them.
More than 43 times they felt disgusted, pity and sympathy.

While these 43 scars have graced my skin for my entire life (and most likely will continue to), I can say there were more than more than 43 ways I blamed myself for not fitting into a specific category I, alone, set up for myself.

More than 43 times I let others dictate and break my inner peace. More than 43 times I forced myself to wear jeans in 100-degree weather and found 43 reasons why this made me “unbeautiful.”

Until one day, a friend of mine said two words that forever sunk into me and changed my idea about them.

“Who cares.”

Eventually you hit a point where you just stop, and it may not be an earth-shattering realization. Sometimes it’s the simplest combination of words that would entirely make sense once we stop analyzing them.

Although this may be easier said than done, most of life’s greatest advice is the sum of two words; “let go,” “just breathe,” “move on.”

Maybe that’s the point. Because at the end of the day, my 43 scars cannot harm neither can it help the world in any way. It’s what’s inside my body that ripples out and can either harm or give to others.

So at the end of the day, I’m grateful for the constellation that is scattered across my skin; a constellation of stars to remind me that we’re all made of an imperfect combination of stardust.

And we’re all beautiful in our imperfect way.

So here’s to 43 stars and counting.