Scars...

Today is the 20th March and the Earth is at autumnal equinox when the day and night are of equal length.

So at last our weather should change, hopefully.
We have been experiencing unreal hot weather during January and February this year.
For me it was and still is an uphill struggle!
I am just not a summer person, I prefer winter by far. I think I would love to live in England with all that snow and rain. It wouldn’t bother me to never see the sun again ...

I find it always so strange with overseas visitors plastering on sun block when the temperature is below 20 degrees Celsius; and we don’t even bother because that is not warm enough for us.
However if I look at my skin and all the melanoma’s I’m battling with, I know it’s from not enough protection over the years against the ultraviolet rays of the sun.

I have several scars on my body. Some scars on my body are comical and some represent a deep hurt from my past...

The first scar I acquired between my nose and my upper lip (Philtrum) at the age of four; when my cousins decided to play a joke on me and sent me into the chicken coup to collect eggs and the rooster who was protecting/guarding his nests with eggs decided it’s time to kick me out! It was a bad scar/experience then, but not anymore; however in the light it is still visible.

The vaccination scar on my right arm, just below the shoulder was the first to confirm that my skin form the most horrific scar tissue (Keloids). Kids can be so cruel and eventually when I really got tired from explaining why I have the scar; I told everyone that I got bitten by a horse. LOL - that stopped them in their tracks!

Then another scar is on my shin after disobeying my mom and shaving my legs when I was fourteen. I had no choice, it was the fashion... I had this ‘hateful girl’ in my group who was always reminding me of the fact that I should shave my legs as well as my eyebrows…Needless to say, when we started shaving in our teenage day, we had old fashioned Minora blades which delivered a mean cut and your scars showed the next day for everybody else to see. (and if there is still something good on my body it is my legs)

And then there are the bushy eyebrows; after shaving/plucking it off with tweezers to thin them out (no waxing in those days); it never grew back again like it used to be; so an eyebrow pencil was the answer to that problem.
My daughter wax hers and I tell you I think that is even a bigger mistake, because it grew back, backwards and downwards and she never looked the same again. It has to be done on a regular basis now...

Then there are the cesarean bikini line scars; the appendix scar due to a Porphyric attack and not due to an appendix rupture and lastly the four little incisions on my upper abdomen due to a laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication.

However, some scars on my body aren't so humorous...

For example, there’s the one white scar/mark on the right side of my forehead, in my hairline which I acquired after radiotherapy to eradicate a big 20c piece melanoma. I lost a lot of hair at that stage and had to wear scarves; but it’s almost back to normal, if I can call it normal. Luckily it’s not showing, with my long hair I can hide the bald patch.

And then there is the half a dozen or more scars on my back and shoulders due to melanoma removals over the years; not to mention my ear piercings which grew as big as peas and had to be surgically removed.

Another example are the two crescent shaped scars just below my belly button. They aren't the result of body piercing, but of three laparoscopic exploratory surgeries to try and discover why I was having all these cysts and unbearable pain. They reminded me of the years that I struggled with four miscarriages. Then there's the scar on the right side of my abdomen that reminds me of the weeks of waiting and wondering if the big tennis ball lump was malignant or benign.

No, not all scars are humorous.

Perhaps the most painful scars that I bear are the ones you can not see. You know the ones I'm talking about. We all have them. They are the scars on our hearts and in our souls. The scar of rejection from a mother that didn't know how to show her love for me because she lost her mother at the age of four. (My grandmother died with the birth of her fourth child due to kidney failure and Variegate Porphyria); the scars of disappointment with my miscarriages; the scars of my broken dreams. I was an excellent athlete but wasn’t allowed the chance to compete; and lastly the scars in my heart that I carry that nobody can seen; my fight to accept the fact that my talented young son had to have a dual-chamber pacemaker implant; my daughter struggling with O.C.D. (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and Bipolar; my youngest that inherited my horrible monster, Variegate Porphyria.

We receive scars in one of three ways; what has been done through us by our very own failures and mistakes; what has been done to us by other people and our genetic DNA inheritance.

However, I am no longer ashamed of my scars and I don’t try to hide them any more like when I was a little girl. They are living proof that I have been healed and that I am a survivor and that God loves me! So, it there is still another pebble or a mar in me today, God will remove it and remold me into what He intended me to be from the very beginning...

Success is not about the acceptance or applause of people. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.

I never think of the future, it will come soon enough, life goes on regardless...

“We live to die” - Zelia 2005