The Cutprice Guignol

As we get into the warmer months of the year, and I emerge from my bearskin pelt to begin considering the existence of shorts again, I am once again faced with my body.

Well, some specific bits of it, to be fair. And those bits happen to be, at the moment, my self-harm scars.

I have self-harm scars scattered over my body in a few places, and, most of the time, I don’t even notice them. They’ve been part of my body for so long that they’re sort of background noise to me now, or at least, they usually are. In this transition between winter and not-winter where I am in the world, wearing those short sleeves and short skirts and what have you always reminds me, oh, yes, there they are again. I’ve had issues with self-harm since I was in my mid-teens, and my body, like it or not, carries the memory of all of those instances. Most of them are quite faded now, but there are some which have just stubbornly stuck around no matter how much Bio-Oil I’ve slapped on to them, especially when I’ve caught the sun (as a Scottish woman, this means that hearing about nice weather from three rooms away is enough to give me a light sunburn).

Over the course of my life, I’ve felt a whole lot about my scars. When I first started self-harming, I made no attempt at all to hide them – it was some kind of teenage defiance, I think, and a sign I could use to tell people how much I was struggling without having to bother putting it into words. Later, in my early twenties, I would cover them up in public as much as I could, with clothes or make-up, ashamed at how obvious my worst times were to anyone who met me. It felt like I couldn’t go anywhere without these glyphs of my own fucked-up-ness written all over my body, and that’s not always something you want to communicate to the person serving your coffee or helping you with the self-service check-out, you know? People were generally quite accepting of them or at least willing to ignore them, though I did get the occasional “PROMISE you’ll stop doing that FOR ME” from well-meaning but fantastically annoying men trying to swoop down in saviour mode. But I wasn’t accepting of them – I hated what they said about me, what they made obvious to people. They were physically ugly to me, but the emotional weight they carried, what they reminded me of, was the worst part.

I know some people view their scars as a triumphant thing – a symbol of how they overcame a terrible time in their lives, how they survived in the face of enormous struggle. I understand that, and, hell, if it’s a helpful way to see your scars, I fully support it. But for me, this year, for the first time, I’ve found that they don’t mean much to me now that it’s come time to get ’em out again.

They’re not really that emotive, one way or another – yes, they came to be through some shitty experiences, but, to be fair, I think most people’s scars of any descriptions didn’t come to be due to fantastic circumstances. They’re part of me, and have been for so long that the emotional weight that was once attached to them has faded along with the worst of the scarring.

Which is strange, because I never thought I would feel that way – I never thought I would be able to see them and not feel that same gut-punch of emotion that came with their creation. To be able to look at them and not feel anything in particular – not shame, not grief, not anything other than just the neutral knowledge of their existence – is a point I didn’t think I would ever reach. To be able to look at this visceral symbol of a time when I was extremely unwell and see it as a neutral marker of a time in my life rather than a reminder of what I failed at feels like an enormous step forward; perhaps one that’s come with time, perhaps as I’ve tried to shift my perspective on my body. But, God, it feels good to go into this new season without the same weight these scars normally carry.

If self-harm is something you’ve dealt with? What’s your relationship with your scars (if any at all)? I would love to hear about it in the comments, if you’re comfortable sharing.

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