Whenever I get a question with the word “best” in it, I have a difficult time processing and narrowing down all the possibilities.
Today it was like that again – what is the best moment of 2013 – or something to that effect.
Well, after much puzzling I narrowed it down to moments that each had a domino effect on the final outcome.
All of this may seem so minor to you, but to me, it has great significance.
If you have been reading here for a while, you will know I had surgery for melanoma on my face in September 2012. You will also know I have been troubled by the scar almost ever since. Not the entirety of the scar, but two spots that weren’t healing as they should.
I waffled throughout the year since I had never been through this and didn’t know the norm. I was busy part of the time being the good-little-patient saying, “Well, if this is the face I am left with, I can deal with that.”
People told me they couldn’t notice it anyway – but that wasn’t ever the point. I noticed it.
I used my hair to hide it a lot, but as I got more comfortable with it and became more carefree the questions started popping up. “Were you a victim of violence?” to which I would respond, “The violence was cancer.”
There was one part of my scar that was spread – and the rest was neatly stitched up and yes, barely noticeable. I wanted the entire thing to be barely noticeable.
After nine months or so, my surgeon started talking about scar revision surgery.
I waffled on whether to do right up to when I was put under anesthesia. The clincher which got me to go forward was a conversation with my daughter, Katherine. She said, “You are finally getting to do what you always wanted to do!” Those words washed away all the comments of “Oh, it isn’t noticeable,” and “You have a scar?” to the questions about a violent episode causing the scar. In the stretched section, make-up didn’t stick on it, so no matter what I tried, I felt like it was there and I felt like it would distract people who saw me on stage and the one film shoot I did throughout the year I made sure to have my cheek with the scar never facing the lense.
A week ago, I got my stitches out.
My surgeon, he and his staff have become my biggest cheerleaders, said, “Go look in that mirror over there and tell me what you think.”
I stood up and bravely walked toward the mirror.
Without any thought I said, “Oh, it is like a miracle. It is a miracle.”
Tiny stitches where there once was distracting, ugly scar tissue.
I still had my now-famous heart shaped scar, but now it was like a thin pencil sketch of skin rather than a dagger and then a pencil sketch.
I did what I had wanted to do for nearly a year.
I didn’t allow the opinions of anyone else to interfere with what I wanted to do.
Sure, some people have said, “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t noticed it before…”
Again, it is my opinion which is important. My. Opinion. Is. Most. Important.
Yes. The best single moment of my year.
(Notice – I also became a Granny but I took this prompt to be something with ME directly. Just wanted to make that clear!)
This post is a part of my response to prompts for ProjectReverb. Check them out on Twitter @Project_reverb and with the hashtag #reverb13
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
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