Ever since I was young, I’ve always been drawn to customize. That’s a vague statement, but I feel as though no truer one exists in my life. I was always particular about my dolls, only keeping two and always keeping them naked so their bare cloth bodies, connective tissue between hard hands, feet, and head, were perfectly exposed. Every notebook or journal had at least my name, written on them in thick sharpie, and as the year wore on they slowly became more and more coated in doodles, art, concepts, names, words. When I got my first cell phone, this flip-phone made in a post-blackberry era, I spent hours looking through ringtones, backgrounds, and fonts. That’s how I’ve always been, with every item I owned. For better or for worse, every single thing I own, I mark somehow.
I’ve had a conflicting view of my own body ever since I became aware of it, and this will be pertinent soon. For a long time, I was me, and my body and myself were not two entities, but one whole that ran, played, and loved. Then, as I grew, I became aware of the space I took up, the changes my body underwent, the things that set me apart from every other human animal I met, and suddenly the concept of myself and my body were separate. When I was a child, I had to have been naive to this fact, because there was something shameful in the flesh of my being that, though I couldn’t put it to words, was still very real. That shame, it couldn’t be me, it was my body. I was this entity apart from the meat I piloted, and the meat I found myself in was flawed, and incorrect. Now, examining my body in the mirror, I have to work to realize that the thing I see isn’t some suit I wear, it’s me. It’s my being, not some ill-fitting gift my parents crafted to house my essence or whatever else. The flesh I see is, for better or for worse, everything that makes up me. To see not my body in the mirror, but myself, is alien after so many years pretending to be something beyond the creature I am.Â
Finding that peace with my body again, I now realize, lays in customization. Perhaps it’s that draw to customization that’s led me to love and embrace every scar I’ve gotten. I love to show people the marks on my hands and arms, one from a broken bowl, two from gravy burns, and the countless others from rabbit attacks. The obvious white mark over my lip, in the place of a beauty mark, where a dog had bitten through the skin, and the less obvious mark on the boundary of my lip where the same dog had done the same thing a few months later. Likely, then, this explains why the only emotion that comes close to rivaling my frustration at my pinched nerves and aching hands is pride. Why I love to tell everybody, in as many words as possible, about my ulnar nerve pains, my carpal tunnel numbness, my cracking joints in hands that have spent time creating music, words, and art. Each mark is a reminder of what I’ve done, things that make up who I am, and they show that my body, too, is a part of those things. My body is marked, made my own by the life I lead.
And it’s through this I realize what I want, and what I need, in order to better see my body as myself and not a mechanical marvel of chemical signals I control from the outside. You see, I can mark myself without scars or nerve damage. I can change it to suit who I see myself as. Art can make itself at home in my skin, piercings can show my control over the bits of myself I show to you. I can choose to paint my skin, and I can choose not to, in defiance of whatever society dictates that I am supposed to do. I can strip my body of the hair it grows, and embrace it in kind, and I can do both things at once. I can exercise, sculpt myself into somebody physically stronger than I am, and I can feel the calluses on my fingers from playing guitar, and I can find peace with every little mark and ache and pain that makes me who I am. This flesh of mine and these thoughts of mine and these words of mine, they’re all me. I can put them wherever I like and dress them up however I please. I’ve always been drawn to customize, to externalize that which is me, and what I am is a worn notebook, begging to be made my own.Â
Every person, with every part of their being, is a canvas that they themselves get to recreate however they like, with whatever base materials they’re born with, and isn’t that beautiful? You get to be a person and live and grow and make, and there is nothing more basic and yet so profound to realize. Create what you will, and know that everything you make and every mark you receive is a part of you. You’re so much more than any single event, any single trait, and you get to show that to every other person you ever meet. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that fascinating, and wonderful, and overwhelming? How is it to know that you are always profoundly yourself? Every moment you get to express yourself, to express every part of who and what you are, is a moment you take another step towards your messy, scarred, perfect self. Take those moments where you can, and fight to protect them from those that would infringe on your right to be a human being. Fight so that every single person in the world can have a fair chance at creating and expressing and being themselves. It’s everything we have. It’s everything we are.
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