Do scars make us who we are?

Although the page has been extremely quiet over the past couple of weeks I have contacted another member and I plan on speaking with him soon. Meanwhile I thought it would be interesting to do a freewrite on one of the photos in the “pictures’ tab. The photo is of a piece of paper possibly stuck on a piece of glass. The paper reads “Every scar I have makes me who I am”. So far in this ethnography it’s easy to see that a lot of people are ashamed or do not make any of their scars visible. But I question myself on that because are they really ashamed and is it something that embarrassing to the person? I myself do not believe scars are something that need to be hidden forever but I understand that at first it is a frightening thought and you feel vulnerable. But eventually this feeling passes whether it’s days, weeks, months, or years but it does happen. No matter what it is that caused that scar; self injury, an accident, or anything really that scar does make you who you are. In a way it is a reminder of whatever it is that happened and reminders can be a painful experience but in another way the scar is prove that you were injured but that you made it out alive. Now we can ask ourselves, what is the logic behind any of this? From my perspective, there is no logic. Every human being is unique in how they approach something like this. I’ve met many cutters in the past and not one of them is the same at the others. Some of them are comfortable with showing their scars and some of them wouldn’t dare to take off their sweater. Because of all this, it’s hard to pinpoint the “why” but really that’s not what should be the focus in discussions based on self injury. Instead the focus should be on the individual not the entire self injuring body. When we can address the individual person then we can figure out the details. So when I saw the photo of the piece of paper I remembered the words of someone I met a few years ago. She was a self injurer and during one of our conversations she said, my scars are evidence that I survived. So if you fell off your bike and cut your face, or if you deliberately harmed yourself either way you have a scar that is a reminder of that event and a reminder that you survived.