bits I hate

today we have scar tissue

I'm taking a closer look at things I hate. This view of me is a lonely one, it's not one I share often...but now, in my attempt to face up to the bits of life I hate, I'm chucking it out in public and telling the story that goes with it.

when I was 16 I had a beautifully flat and smooth belly - I'd just got past the teenage crisis of thinking I was the most hideous person the whole world and, also, my childhood eczema had cleared up (which had left me itching, looking like a leper on a bad day and leaving sticking me to sheets and clothes and, indeed, myself, for many years). So, great, sweet 16 and ready to strip naked at any opportunity when along came a grumbly appendix that grumbled too loud one day and had to be removed. Now, the guy who performed surgery possibly used a knife for the first time when he cut me open. I think he used a bread knife. It was probably also dirty. Whilst other people on my ward were having 'keyhole surgery', I was way back in time having 'garage door surgery'. Not only that, he sewed me up wrong (it's hard to mend a wound like that) - not only was it lop-sided, some bits weren't actually together. You could've stuck a finger in me, should you have so desired. And then it all got infected. It was about a year before I could laugh without it hurting. And it was about then that I realised that my flat, smooth belly had been exchanged for a lop-sided, lumpy one. Three pregnancies didn't help matters, the scar started falling apart as it got stretched and, because my skin had basically been put back together wrongly, it couldn't stretch the right way. So, on top of a nasty scar, I also got hideous stretch marks like flames burning across me. Now my children are big and I am getting old and saggy anyway, so I don't care quite so much and can wear a bikini and look crap without panicking. But I still feel angry for that 16 year who had all the confidence in her looks knocked out of her by an incompetent git with a breadknife.