Beautiful Scars

I was scared out of my mind as I looked at myself in the mirror. I stared at my half-naked body and for the first time ever in my 26 years of life I regretted ever letting a sharp object touch my skin. I stopped the self-destructive habit only 8 months ago thanks to my best friend who dragged me to a psychologist's office.

"Since when did this start?" the shrink asked me in our first session and I honestly did not have an answer. It was crazy to me when I realized I didn't know exactly when I first started to cut myself. It was like a dream. I suddenly appeared in the middle of cutting myself and it became a part of my life for so long that I didn't remember a time when I didn't do it.

Now here I am, in my wedding night, moments before joining my husband in the next room for the first time in an act I've been scared of since the moment he asked me to marry him. I wasn't scared of sex; not really, I was more scared of him, his reaction, to the marks on my skin. The marks of a secret I kept for ten years until 8 months ago. I never told a soul, only my best friend, and it was because I had no choice since he caught me cutting myself in my bathroom one day by surprise.

As I looked at the faded scars in my bathroom mirror and how they ran up and down my arms, starting from my wrists all the way to my elbows and how the last ones I did completely encompassed my inner thighs, for the first time I felt ashamed. I've always felt ugly but never ashamed of what I did for so long until this moment when I realized that the person I loved most and whose opinion I hold highest in my heart could take one look at me and flee in disgust or even worse, look at me with pity.

"Baby, are you okay? You've been in there for twenty minutes." Bryan, my best friend and now husband, said lowly from outside the bathroom door.

"Yeah, I'll be out in a second."

I took a deep breath and suddenly my breathing turned to hyperventilating as I realized that I was moments away from revealing myself, fully, to the one I loved and... he might never look at me the same way again. I met Bryan in College but He never saw my scars because I always wore long sleeves with jeans. There was one time he asked me why I never wore a dress and I simply told him my parents were very conservative; which wasn't a complete lie... just not the complete truth either. After that, he never asked me again, but I always thought he might've suspected but he was such a gentleman he never brought it up again. When we started dating in my last year of College I became even more scared to tell him the truth. Even though he never pushed me in any way to have sex, he was a guy, what else could he be thinking about? So when he caught me one afternoon in my bathroom cutting myself with a razor I thought he would think of me as a freak, start yelling or run away. I didn't know how I expected him to react! But he simply took the razor away from me and let me cry on his shoulder until I couldn't breathe.

Fast-forward and here I am, almost not able to breathe about to open my bathroom door not knowing what awaited me at the other side.

I took a deep breath and I opened the door with my heart in my mouth.

As I slowly stepped outside I noticed that Bryan had been busy while I was inside the bathroom. He had unpacked our things and ordered some wine and some ice, which he was about to take a drink of when he turned around as he heard me open the door.

I saw as he took me in, all of me, from my brown hair, to my marked body all the way down to my manicured toes. As I notice him look at the scars in my thighs (scars I know he didn't know existed because he only saw me cutting my arms) I got very self-conscious and soon enough panic hit me, my anxiety attack started coming back with a vengeance and I started walking backward toward the bathroom, my refuge.

"Don't." I heard Bryan whisper as he softly took my arm. I had shut my eyes, hard, not wanting to see his face and unwillingly tears started falling from my closed eyes, bursting through from behind my eyelids. I felt him tug softly at my arm and I started moving my body to where he led me. I walked for brief seconds until I heard movement of the bed and I was suddenly stopped.

My left arm was turned upward and then I felt something that only made my tears flow even more.

A set of soft lips started kissing each one of my scars from my wrist all the way up to my elbows and then the action was repeated on my other arm. By the time he had taken my leg, put it up on the bed and started kissing the deeper wounds in my thighs, I felt myself sobbing and when I opened my eyes he was looking up at me with kind and soft eyes, a complete opposite to pity, which I was eternally grateful for.

"Is this what you didn't want me to see?" Bryan asked as he cupped my face and started wiping my tears away.

"It's just... I... I look so..." I couldn't finish the sentence because the words caught in my throat.

"You look beautiful. And your "flaws" just make you more beautiful."

"I don't know if I'll be able to stop, Bryan... not for long... what if I can never stop?" I whispered feeling like I opened a page in my book that I never let anyone read, not even Bryan. A page where I had my darkest fears, fears that shamed me even more. He pushed me softly down to sit beside him on the bed and held my hand tightly in his.

"I promised you today that I would be with you in sickness and in health, richer or poorer until death do us part. And I meant it, Mrs. Abigail Summers."

I smiled as he called me by my new name.

"And we fight our battles together now."

I suddenly felt the biggest weight I never knew I had on my shoulders lift and fly away, far away. Bryan took my chin and kissed me softly, pushed me back on the bed and made love to me slowly all night, like a painter admiring his masterpiece.

For the first time in a long time, I felt like myself again, unchained and free. I knew it; I felt it in the deepest part of my heart. A part I had locked away a long time ago, that this night was the birth of a new Abigail.