More Than My Scars: Radical Self-love and the Self-injured Body October 28, 2016 by E Alice Isak 1 Comment 95Share with your friendsYour NameYour EmailRecipient EmailEnter a MessageI read this article and found it very interesting, thought it might be something for you. The article is called More Than My Scars: Radical Self-love and the Self-injured Body and is located at https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/more-than-my-scars-radical-self-love-and-the-self-injured-body/.CaptchaSubmit I have never forgotten the first time I cut into my own flesh deliberately: the motes of dust in the air lit by a late afternoon sunbeam; the threadbare sofa in my dorm room where I sat; the blue-handled scissors that I held open for what seemed an eternity; the expanse of pale, clear skin on the inside of my forearm before I brought the scissors down against it. My skin has never again bloomed so smooth. *** Some mornings I don’t even notice the scars. I dry off in a hurry from the shower, too preoccupied about catching my train to pay attention to the wide lines that run pale and hairless across my thighs. I let my eyes slip glancingly off the mirror before noticing the ridges that tic-tac-toe both my shoulders. I run my fingers along them when I’m nervous, or lying in my bed at night. Felt but unseen, they seem just another element of the strange cartography of the body: its folds and curves of fat, hair forever resprouting, the small hard lump of a premenstrual pimple. The most pronounced hypertrophic scars lie along my left forearm, where the record of those first fumblings with blue-handled scissors have been lost beneath more than a decade of razor-sharp reminders. When stroked along a certain path, my whole left arm feels like corduroy. The most recent scar is still forming, even though nearly two years have passed since I made this final cut. I suspect it will sink as it finishes healing, leaving an inch-wide trough of puckered skin collapsed down the length of my calf. People ask me if I was in a bicycling accident. “No,” I say—and run my hand gently up and down the scar, as if soothing a frightened animal. After so many years of self-inflicted violence, it is still learning to trust me, this body. And I am still learning how to show I love it. More Radical Reads: Perfection is Hazardous and Scars are Inevitable So I Might As Well Learn to Love Them *** A photograph of a silhouette of a person standing outdoors. The ground is also in silhouette. The background is the sky which is orange near the ground, and light blue in the middle of the sky and dark blue at the top of the photograph. Source: https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2016/02/18/15/19/sunset-1207326_960_720.jpg Collectively speaking, we understand the impulses behind self-injury far more today than anyone did when I began cutting twenty-five years ago. Some people self-injure when they feel emotionally or physically numb—and a cut provides sensation. Some self-injure when they feel emotionally or physically overloaded—and a cut provides relief. I used to keep all of the theories on the tip of my tongue, ready to rattle off to doctors or therapists or friends anytime I feared the distraction of my scarred body might cause them to discount the heft of my mind. I deeply feared being seen as crazy, you understand. Mostly because I thought I might be. Who but a crazy person, I wondered, would take comfort in such violence against her own body? I didn’t know anyone but myself who did this, back in the early years. I certainly didn’t know anything about trauma, or how its effects linger and mutate over time. Understanding the sources now lessens the weight of my scars. I have an easier time not seeing them, their paler flesh that once glared out at me like brandings. But casual question from a coworker—“hey, how’d you get that scar?”—can still bring them all flaring back up to my eye, the anatomical map of an ugly past only I know how to read. *** Cutting is not the only form of self-injury, nor is self-injury the only method by which the traumatized, the injured, the lonely, and the anguished manipulate their bodies for a sense of control. As with any relationship, control is a decimating basis for relating to your body, complete opposite to the flourishing that becomes possible when you lead with love. Even during my active cutting years, I knew my body needed love. The knowledge frightened me. Maybe if I reached just a little harder for the control I craved, I could at last achieve mastery: over my body, my emotions, over dreams too haunting for me to admit them as memories. More Radical Reads: Why My Broken Body is Worthy of Delighting in *** During the years that I was cutting, the stigma and visibility of my self-injury gave me a particularly contorted relationship to my body. Like many with body shame, I always wore long sleeves and pants, even in summer heat. If, in a moment of carelessness or distraction, I pulled my sleeves up to my elbows and exposed fresh scabs or half-healed cuts to an acquaintance, I had a ready-to-go list of excuses, most involving fictitious and ferocious pet cats. But lying cut thin grooves into my soul as surely as a razor did into my arm. Separating body from self, the way a knife promises to do, is its own form of lie. We are both. We are all. To stop cutting one, I needed to stop cutting both. I felt equal parts brave and frightened, the first time I went out in shorts and without stories. “My god, were you attacked by a dog?!” an acquaintance exclaimed when she saw the angry red mark extending up my right shin. “No,” I said—and stopped. We both stood still a moment and stared at one another. I had to remind myself to breathe. I had to remember I was not falling. *** As I have been writing these words today, I have also stopped periodically to look at the scars on my arms. I have run my hands along my chest, feeling for where the skin pulls suddenly tighter along familiar ridge lines. My own distinctive language of flesh, written like a palimpsest over and over on the same fragments of skin until only the most recent record is still legible. I used to be able to read a memory in each scar. Time has dulled those, even as it has softened the scars themselves. Self-injury is only one of many traumas that become inscribed on our bodies. How do we make peace with these visible—and visibly public—records of our private pain? I wish I had a perfect answer. Then I remember again how love does not demand perfection, but rather a willingness to live with imperfection. How it is nourished with patience, honesty, and gentle touch that seeks understanding rather than control. I remember: sometimes love feels like falling. In order to continue producing high quality content and expanding the message of radical, unapologetic self-love, we need to build a sustainable organization. To meet these efforts, we’re thrilled to share the launch of our #NoBodiesInvisible subscription service. This service will provide our community with access to additional content and rewards for your monthly investment in furthering our radical self-love work. Are you ready to go deeper in loving and valuing yourself and holding your community accountable? Check out our webinar 10 Tools for Radical Self Love. (Feature Image: A photograph of a person with brown curly hair. Their back is facing the camera and they are wearing a dark jacket. The background is sunlight and the woods. Source: https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2014/05/21/15/26/peace-of-mind-349815_960_720.jpg ) 95