The other day I was blessed to meet an incredible individual. I was sitting in the library, doing homework and wasting time {unfortunately more of the latter} when this girl caught my eye. Now normally I enjoy people watching, but I am very careful about out right staring at them. Usually I can just watch them out of the corner of my eye or from behind my computer screen because I realize that just down right staring is rude. I couldn't take my eyes off of this girl.
She was absolutely beautiful. One of those girls that I automatically hated her when she sat down at the same table as me because she was so pretty. I was jealous. She was the kind of pretty that when she came into a room girls held onto their men a little tighter. Being a girl, I gave her the perfunctory once over to establish just how much I hated her as she sat down.
What caught my eye were her arms. When she took off her trendy blazer I saw that her arms were criss-crossed with ugly red scars and pale white scars with one absolutely frightening one straight down the middle of her forearm. I'm embarrassed to say that she caught me staring and while I expected her move her arms so as to hide her scars, she just smiled at me and said, "Don't feel bad for staring, I don't blame you." She wasn't embarrassed by her scars, that's not to say that she was proud of them either. I asked her if it would be totally out of line for me to ask about, especially since I was a total and complete stranger. Luckily she seemed to be pretty open about it and invited me to ask away.
I couldn't seem to stop myself from asking "Why?". Why did such a beautiful girl feel the need to have ever done that? And that question led into a very interesting conversation with this fascinating individual (for ease of writing the rest of this post I'm going to call her Sara...which isn't her real name of course). Sara explained that her self harm stemmed from low self esteem and an abusive relationship that she had been trapped in. She said that she had a hard time coping with the abuse and with the lack of support that she was finding in her home life that she turned to cutting because it was both a release and because the pain that came from it distracted her. Eventually she reached the point where she felt so trapped and so hopeless that she slit up her arms instead of across in an effort to take her own life. She was lucky that her best friend knew something was up and came just in time to save Sara's life.
Because her friend knew her so well, Sara is alive today and was able to get the help that she needed. She explained to me that the hospital put her into contact with a support group that helped her to come to the place that she is at today. She said that she isn't proud of her scars but now when she looks at them she sees where she has been and where she will never go again. Sara then showed me a small tattoo on her left wrist, it was a semi-colon. Now I have heard of the semi-colon movement in passing when one of my psych classes went over the psychology of self harm. Their main message was that your story didn't end where you thought it would/or tried to end it. It goes on.
Sara fascinated me. On the outside and at a glance she seemed pulled together (which in a way I know that she is), in her trendy outfit and designer label sunglasses. Had I just walked past her on the street I never would have guessed that she had been through something like that. It struck me that you don't really know anyone...we've all heard that old cliche that you can't judge a book by it's cover; but today I was struck by how true that can be.
What will it hurt me to be a little more pleasant in my dealings with people around me? Not everyone has scars that we can see and we don't know what kind of battle they are fighting every day. So here's to a kinder world and thank you Sara for opening my eyes. I feel incredibly blessed to have met her.
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