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It Was that Small Accident

This changed my entire life path.

By Delenn MulvaneyPublished 7 years ago 5 min read
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I don’t believe it’s acceptable to judge or drag someone else down due to an imperfection on their skin. It is emotionally harmful and takes away from a person’s image of their own beauty. The self image you hold of yourself is the most important! Once that image is broken or becomes diminished, it is beyond difficult to put that back together and build up your self esteem again.

When I was in third grade I was put in this position. I had been walking back to the school from the after school care center to meet my older brother because he got out a little later than our sister and I. As I walked past a brick wall almost to the entrance I was hit directly below the eye with a rock. Not only was it a rock, it was a cement clump of rock jagged and broken, with bits of small rocks all over it.

I didn’t realize what happened, all I knew was my face was numb and a rock was at my feet. The bell rang and the older kids came pouring out of the school. One of my brothers friends, a girl with blonde hair and pretty eyes, looked at me standing there still in shock of what had happened. I can still remember the look of horror that passed over her features as she came sprinting to me. Dropping her bag and books she started yelling at her friend to go find my brother.

The next thing I remember is her asking if I can feel anything and to not look down at the ground, keep my hand on my face and we’ll go to the nurse’s office. Of course, being a third grader I pull my hand away from my face and look at it because it felt a bit wet. That would have probably been one of the worst decisions of my life.

Blood was everywhere, coating my hand a dripping down onto my favorite shirt and jeans, I think I screamed for a second and then instantly started crying. Which made the mess even bigger and by then I could feel the pain rushing through my face.

Hurrying to the nurse’s office—I think someone actually carried me there—she calls my parents and my father is the first to show up. I’m still crying because my face hurts and I ruined my favorite outfit. I was such a girl at that time... When mom arrives my parents take me to the ER to get my face stitched up. The doctor numbed the area of my face that needed work and he began. To this day I can still feel the needle pulling through and tugging at my cheek closing the wound.

Going back to school was the worst, the children in my class would ask to see the injury, and being a stupid child I would show them.

The girls would usually shriek,“Ew! That’s so gross! Put it away, put it away!”

And the boys, “Oh man, that’s nasty, but it looks so cool! Can I touch it?”

It turns out the boy who threw the rock at me hadn’t meant to, he was trying to show off to a friend and just didn’t see me as I walked past. He got suspended and I guess he had to move because I never saw him again. As the stitches started to disintegrate I didn’t have to wear a bandage anymore.

I remember one morning at breakfast, the first time I went to school without the cover bandage; I sit at a table by myself, all my friends sitting in their usual groups excluding me because I was "different" now. A boy that I had known, Malcolm, came and sat next to me. He started to smile at me without saying a word and I asked why he was looking at me so creepily and guess what he responded?

With a finger pointed at my face, behold, my new nickname "Scar-face” slipped out of his mouth. Wildly laughing he turned around and walked away. Over the course of the next few days almost everyone in my class started to pick up on it. Now I had few friends and an even smaller amount of people I could talk to about how I was feeling. So ashamed and hateful towards myself and everyone else who had been hurting me.

Every time someone called me by that nickname I lost more confidence in how I physically appeared and it began to tear down my inner self as well. I grew bitter and started having the negative thought loops about myself. I had a blemish and everyone surrounding me made it so prominent.

I was more than relieved to move away from that school and those little monsters. But what happened to me stuck with me. I thought that it would be better and I’d be okay, the scar below my left eye started to look even better and healed nicely, although it was still noticeable if you looked straight at it.

After moving I realized that I developed social anxiety, I was terrified of what people would think of me, and most of all I don’t think I trusted anyone 100% after that happened to me. I would have panic attacks heading to school in the morning and it was that one small accident that ruined me for years following.

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