Odd
August 29th, 2007I have nightmares sometimes where I’m covered in scars. I see my back in the mirror, crossed with white lash marks, and in the dream I feel incredibly ashamed.
When this came up in conversation yesterday, it sounded vain. I am vain in reality: I would be love to be covered in scars and tattoos. I just need to wait until my skin isn’t my most valuable possession. In the meantime, I worry about marks like some people worry about germs. Apparently I’m not over it.
What to say? Calico, enough, honey, sort it out already. You’re not unique in your pain — in fact, you’re really as lucky as they come.
I know this, since I’m certainly not coming up with any new questions. Are we right/wrong/going to burn in hell? How do we stop feeling guilty? Can he/she respect me? How do we learn to hurt the people we love? Are we feminists? Can people actually live this way?
Please! You’d think I’d never read a book. (Or attended a BDSM convention, like the one last weekend I’m procrastinating writing about.)
And it’s so stupid. I know all the right answers. I give them all the time.
I think this stuff must be like a second adolescence. You have to whine your way through it regardless of knowledge, and everyone else has to be patient with you.
August 29th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Hmmmmmmm…
August 29th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
I like that book. And I worry obsessively about being marked too, despite having scars on my eyebrow, shoulder, hands, forearm, and chest (you’d probably only notice the shoulder and possibly the eyebrow unless I pointed them out though, the rest are pretty minor). None of those scars are from BDSM; they’re all from misadventure except one which is surgical. But despite being pre-marked as it were, I’m paranoid about anything new being added deliberately. You at least have good reasons to care.
August 30th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
The way we treat our bodies is a funny thing. Some people are paranoid about getting marked, and others are paranoid about not getting marked enough.
September 4th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Interesting and well written blog. Makes me think.
I don’t mind my marks on the outside nearly as much as I mind the ones on the inside. Some of each came by way of misspent youth, some by way of deliberate experimentation, and some,….well, the jury is still out on how some scars arrived where they did. All in all I think one has no choice but to wear such things with acceptance, lest one receive scars one truly does not want.
September 10th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I remember being fascinated by the scar on your back when we did the shoot a the loft, it was such an amazing thing on you.It complimented the person I was shooting inside the skin and said much about you with out words.
Body image is a strange thing the person we are on the inside isn’t the person we are on the outside, scars like tattoos in the Maori tradition track our lives, they say who we are - how we have lived - have we had tragedy or triumph. They mark us as who we want to be in the end chosen and self inflicted or gained by life.
I think one day you will grow into your skin, it simply happens when you stop looking.
Lately I have been thinking of a large shoulder tattoo of a certain design and my Name in Kanji (Its nice having a name that actually has a Kanji symbol) simply to let something inside out, my only thought is do I need to let it out? or has life marked me enough for it to show already.
Bottoming to my skin
December 17th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I love each of my scars. So far.
They’re important to me, somehow. The way most remind me of a story perhaps reconnect me to a different moment in time. I also just like the look of them, and the feel of those with textures.
I like the idea of scars and tattoos in general, and I know I’ve found some inked people very hot.