82/90, dog bite

When the doctor said, "We could fix that," I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about. I was there for a physical to get travel clearance, which involved, well, nothing really. He wasn't poking me or using anything to stare inside of me. He was just standing at my right side.

"You could sand those out. Wouldn't take long."

I realized that he was staring at my face. At the suture marks and small divots left from the day when, at age five, a husky lunged at me and attempted to eat part of my face. He hadn't succeeded, but he did leave a perfect circle of multi-layer stitches that alarmed onlookers for some time–from a woman grabbing my face in a grocery store; to a boy asking what person bit my face; to my friends screaming when the bandage covering my right cheek fell off while jumping on the trampoline.

For what seemed like ages, each day before recess my teacher would insist that I got out the suntan lotion my mother sent to school with me and smear it on the right side of my face, to prevent scarring. I was sure it wouldn't matter, that I would always have a circle,  a constellation of fang marks, connecting my eye, jaw line and mouth.

In high school, I felt the need to explain the scars to every boy that I dated. I didn't want him to think that there was something inherently wrong with my face, or that I had (God forbide) suffered from damaging chicken pox or acne. This happened to me. It is not my fault.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the remarks of family members and doctors floated and sparked. Until I turned 18, I could have the problem, those scars, fixed for free. I never really considered it. I was afraid I would come out an entirely different person, or that people would misunderstand my reasoning.

Snapping forward, when this doctor suggested a light sanding of the right side of my face, I was appalled. I said I'd lived with them, and them with me, for 15 years. They didn't need to go away. He shrugged, and said that was true; he said that I wasn't the one that had to look at them. I felt the need to assure him that I was in a relationship. That someone had managed to cope with the scars and date me anyway.

As I've grown, so have my scars. In some way, they've shaped who I am, and I find myself missing them connecting the main features of my face. Now, they're a much smaller circle. They've gotten further from the eye and mouth until they settled in the hollow of my cheek. At times, looking in the mirror, I crinkle my mouth into a pout to watch the last of the real scar tissue pucker.

At some point, I became okay with my face–with the entirety of it. The brown eyes; the freckles my dad always said were their own constellation; my small mouth that looks angry when not smiling. I'd come into all of it. It had grown with me, served me well and wasn't about to change for anyone.

There would be no sanding, no ripping myself apart to put myself back together in a way that left no questions for people, made no one uneasy. Because none of it really happened to me. It all just happened. The "me" is what came out of it.