When I was twelve years old, my mother and father had me go into surgery for cosmetic surgery on my feet, to remove the webs that connected my second and third toes completely. I really did not understand what was going to happen, only that it was supposed to make me feel happy and comfortable with my body, or at least a portion of it. I went in, had the skin sliced from my feet, skin lifted from the third layer of skin in my hip to graft over the bones, and spent a miserably hot summer in Arizona being carried from room to room because I couldn’t walk. All this so that I could wear open toed shoes without being teased, or called Duckwoman for the rest of my life. Today my toes are scarred, bent in on each other, and completely desensitized to touch. Was this the gain I was supposed to have made?
I don’t blame my parents for doing so. I know my mother had a lot of insecurities regarding the condition (from what I know a genetic predisposition to it is passed down through the mother) and so she honestly did what she thought was best for her young daughter, in an attempt to normalize her. Please understand that though I was only twelve, I’d been through a substantial amount of bullying for another medical condition and maybe I think she thought she was trying to reduce the amounts of things that could make my life hell. I don’t blame her for this nor would I ever speak of it again to her. I told her that I missed my webs once and she snapped at me, ‘I already feel bad enough about it’ so I’ve never spoken of it again.
And what a weird thing to care about. Who would mourn the loss of their birth defect? (Syndactyly is the official name of my condition.) I would most likely feel different about this if it was located on a more visible part of my body, such as the hands, or actually impeded my functioning. But it didn’t. It was just something unique about me, something that set me apart from everyone else I knew and I enjoyed having something that was unique to me and didn’t know that I enjoyed it until it was gone. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s no point in robbing people of what makes them different or unique and they may very well end up resenting you for the imposition into their lives. What you may consider a defect or an oddity, they may consider a vital characteristic of their personality. And you do not have the right to take it from them or to characterize what it means for them.
I mean, the man I’ve been crushing on in my apartment complex has a limp. And I get so much shit for liking a man with a noted difference in the way he walks. But you know what? I’ve been walking with a limp since the age of fifteen when I shattered the bones in my right leg rollerskating (an epic adventure for another day). And my limp doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t upset me, I don’t spend time wishing it were gone, I live a really good life without my legs being the same length. I have bad hearing and depend on visual cues to carry on a conversation. And I don’t spend time wishing for better ears or wishing I could be normal. And I think that man is beautiful just the way he is without needing to change a thing about himself…no not even that.
I wish we weren’t so obsessed with perfection, or what we’re told is perfection, and I wish we could instead see beauty and wonder in ‘imperfect’ bodies. I wish we could learn to cherish all the strange little things in our flesh, muscles, bones, and blood that make us each an individual. I wish we could learn to love ourselves as is and not be constantly worried about what people will think if we fail in living up to an arbitrary standard. No let me rephrase that. Let’s not be constantly worried about what people will think about if we SUCCEED in loving and adoring the bodies we’re in just the way they are.
I don’t think you’re overthinking things at all, I think this is lovely. (Um, I also think whoever is giving you shit about your crush is probably a pathetic excuse for a human being. Jeez people.)
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Something I have been thinking about a lot
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