Did I get my period? I thought to myself when I was ten. After investigating, I discovered that I had drawn blood after scratching my right forearm in my sleep. Instead of becoming a woman, I had given myself another open sore. I went to school, and it felt like any normal day. It was not until art class when the boy sitting next to me asked, “What happened to your arm?” He looked disgusted at the dried blood and flaking skin. My mind raced. My palms began to sweat. Nobody had ever asked me that before. I did not know how to explain. My mind thought to say, I scratched my skin off in my sleep. I decided not to; it would make me sound like a freak. “I got burnt.” My heart rate returned to normal when he nodded skeptically and went back to his coloring. Why did it concern him? His question lingered in my mind all day. I felt insecure and judged, like I was under a microscope. …show more content…
My parents brought me to the best doctors of Eastern and Western medicine. They all said the same thing: my eczema was not curable, and most importantly was not my fault. I had never felt guilty before, but this boy made me feel less-than. Not just because my skin was broken, but because I had done it to myself. I wondered for the first time, What’s wrong with me? What did I do to deserve this? I was ashamed. I hated myself for scratching, but I could never bring myself to stop. I became known as the girl with the bad skin. My teachers would send me to the nurse, and only the other outcasts wanted to play with me. My peers would judgmentally tell me, “Your skin is gross!” I wanted to hide. Trying to explain that the dry, red patches confronting me in the mirror were a product of my own actions would only cause more embarrassment. My go-to excuse became “I got