Sixteen years ago, I'd gotten what was maybe a spider bite on my stomach. I don't remember how long it had been bothering me, but I realized during auditions for our church's Christmas "show" (ick, and yes, this is the church that basically made my life a living hell, so they can get bent) that something was really wrong.
I was toughing out my volunteer position checking in people for their try-outs when I realized that the lymph nodes in my arm pits were starting to hurt. I found someone to cover for me, and I drove myself to the ER.
Turns out that however that spot on my stomach at occurred, an MSRA infection had gotten in and was causing a commotion. In addition to pretty strong antibiotics, my treatment plan included having a doctor slice open my skin and then dig out as much of the infection as he could get. Then he packed the hole with paper (medical-grade, but still) specifically so it wouldn't heal. It needed time for more bacteria or infected material to ooze out.
Still with me?
Great.
Several days later, I was able to remove the packing, and my body got to healing... but because I'd had a hole carved into my skin and hollowed out, it never really "disappeared." Over time, it became a pink knot, and later a lighter pink knot. But unlike my parathyroid/thyroid scar, I see it all of the time.
I'm 100% sure no one else cares about it, but I've been tired of it for a couple of years, especially now that I have two-piece bathing suits and I am wearing crop tops.
I had this idea that maybe I could tattoo over it... not ON it, per se (scar tissue is unpredictable in terms of how it will interact with the ink), but maybe a sun over an ocean with the scar in the white space of the sun.
Last weekend was the Halloween flash sale at a local (like I can walk to it) tattoo salon, and they happened to have something very similar to what I was thinking about.
I took a picture when it was about 8 minutes old, and my scar is MAD about being disturbed, but I love it so much and every time I've seen it in the mirror, it's made me smile.
Now when that peeks out, it will say, "Look at my tiny art piece!" instead of "A spider bit me at a stressful time in my life and all I got was a crummy scar!"
Also, I fully realize how inconsequential this is, and I'm not trying to advocate for people covering scars. They're normal in the vast expanse of human experience. I just wanted to do this, and I did. If you have scars, I hope you rock them!
