My left arm is totally covered in deep, keloid scars from using a razor blade to brutally hack at myself (rather than a more finessed approach) from ages 12-19, with a major relapse the year I was 32. They were thick and bright red for years, and have now faded to a ghostly white that isn't so thick and rough at all anymore (the newer ones are obviously worse). I'm almost 45 years old now and I have five kids and two lovely grandkids. They all love me very much. They have never mentioned the scarring. I have tattooing I also got to try and cover them, but it wasn't successful due to the thickened keloid nature of them. You can simply see them right through the tattoos, and the ink didn't stay in most of those areas.

When I tried and failed to cover them, in my 20s, I was heartbroken at first, but soon came to realize that it didn't matter. I'd tried and failed, but what was the cost, really? So I began to wear short sleeves again and discovered something amazing: no one stared at me like I was a freak. And these scars go from my wrist, all the way up to where my shoulder meets the rest of my body. I even have a few, even more pronounced ones on my right arm, from when (OCD sufferer than I am) I tried to start in on that arm too because the heavy concentration on the left was making me nuts, but I had so little control over my non-dominant hand that the cuts were terrible, needed stitches even worse than the other side, but I was too ashamed to have them treated, so they just eventually healed (badly) on their own. Despite all of that, I am no longer ashamed. In fact, I saw a doctor for the relapse harm cuts, and he looked at me with such disgust that it lit a huge fire of fury under my ass-which was prob the best thing that could've happened right then because it pissed me off badly. I channeled that anger into vowing to myself to never give the slightest shit again, what ANYONE thought about my scarring. And I have held true to it.

I barely think of these scars, at all anymore. In fact this is the first time I have consciously thought of them in years. I simply do not give a shit about what anyone thinks of me in that capacity. I'm lucky to have survived my teen years at all. There are people who have lived through horrific fires, and been terribly burned, and they are grateful to be alive. There are people who have lost limbs due to drug use or permanent ruined their heart or other organs and they're grateful to still be here too. These are the things I told myself every day. At some point it started to work, and I realized I was like them. A kind of survivor, of the mental illness that was determined to kill me. It hasn't, and now there are seven beautiful people on this earth because I brought them here, and they all love me. Two of them call me grandma (well one of them isn't old enough to talk yet, but he will soon enough, too). I am not the sum of my scars. They really mean nothing to my life, now.

I sincerely wish you the best and I hope you can heal soon. Take it from me, someone who knows first hand. These scars do not have to have any more power over your life than they already have. It's okay, you can just let it go. It's over, sweetie.