Beautiful

It takes a lot to break through the walls of self-loathing I’ve erected around myself. Layers and layers of barbed wire and electric fencing and moats and solid steel keep me from loving myself – one of the reasons I love others so well, I think.

I guess I was expecting something like this to happen when I told her there would be no lasting scars, emotional or physical. Her eyes had lingered on my wrists already, and I offered the pale skin towards her. “See, no new ones.”

Her eyes were locked onto my forearms, and she shifted towards me. Her voice was small. “You do it on your wrists.”

I took off my watch and tilted the scars towards her, then moved my chair as she leaned in. I removed my class ring as well and placed it on the table, baring my hand totally.

“When are they from?” She allowed her fingers to hover near my exposed wrist.

“These are all from the same time,” I replied calmly, indicating the two on my right and the less-visible mark on my left. “God, I don’t even know. Last December?” I paused, tracing my index finger over the rough edges of the mark layered over the round, faded scar on my right wrist. “This one’s more recent, though there’s too much scar tissue there already to leave much of a mark.”

“Was it because of Kamille?” The name was odd to hear coming from her, and the pronunciation was foreign. Cuh-mill, she spoke it.

“I don’t know. Yes, but it was also other stuff. She left in October. There’s a history of mental stuff in my family, so I think it was brain chemistry too. A lot of stuff happened around the same time…I guess I never really recovered.” I could hear the change in my tone, veering away from the light and airy into flat and accepting. My eyes were only on her as she tentatively reached out and brushed her skin against mine.

“Don’t ever do it for anyone else, ever again.” Her voice was both velvet and steel.

“I won’t. At least, I don’t think I won’t.” I took a breath.

It was silent for a few moments before she spoke again. “How deep did you have to go?” she all but whispered, faintly running the pads of her fingers across the jagged stain on my right wrist. She was all but lying on the table now, resting her head on her arm as her red-rimmed crystalline eyes soaked in the work of her fingers, soft like rain.

“I don’t know.” I answered after a moment. “I…just kept picking at it. I wouldn’t let it heal.”

I had wrapped the rubber band from my left wrist in a gentle loop around the silver circle of my class ring and left them both on the table. I don’t remember exactly what I had said, or she had said, but I looked over and she was crying. Her hand was still on my wrist, or brushing against it, and her auburn hair was cascading down and shielding part of her face.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed, struck by a feeling of anguish. “I’m sorry.” All I knew was my skin was still on hers, and I traced my fingers up her forearm before moving to the gentle shape of her tiny hand. She moved and I moved with her, but then she moved away and I quickly pulled back. I couldn’t see her face at all now through her hair, but I could hear her harsh breathing as she pulled in on herself. Her hand made a “one moment” gesture, and I moved back to our no-touch zone.

It took her a moment to recover. Once she had, she pulled her knees to her chest and crossed her arms over them, closing off her body language. I had gone too far. We had gone too far.

“I’m so…fucked up,” she breathed, running her hand through her hair. And we talked some more, and we didn’t solve any problems, but I don’t think we made anything worse either.

In that gray room that smelled of age and beauty, as I gazed out at the pattern of emerald leaves shielding the view of the river, something changed. I felt wanted, for the first time in a long time. I didn’t feel worthless. I actually believed it when she told me that it very well may be imperfections that make beauty, and my feelings of self-loathing began to melt away under her touch. It was the tendril that made it through my walls and touched my core.

I believed that I was beautiful.