When I was eight years old I went to my parents and said, hey, I think this part of my arm is larger than the other side, while pointing towards my left deltoid. I had noticed this weird lump on my arm for a while prior to going to my parents. The thing was that I didn’t really want to go to my parents and tell them that I thought that anything was wrong. I mean I was raised by a father who frequently reminded both my sister and I that children were better seen than heard.
Keeping within that vein, when I told my parents that I saw a lump on my arm, my parents told me that I was wrong. There wasn’t any lump, and even if there was, it was totally normal, I was just growing and developing muscles, and this is the sort of thing that bodies do all the time. I was advised to ignore it, that it would go away, and that there wasn’t really anything there anyways.
As usual, I dropped my head and relinquished myself to being wrong yet again and went back upstairs. I don’t remember but I am sure that I cried. I cried a lot during those years of my life. I was rejected at so many turns by so many times, places, situations, events, and people. It was the people rejections that hurt the most. Things just seemed pretty straightforward to me. I just didn’t understand why everyone around me thought that what I thought was so wrong.
These are the thoughts that make me ponder if I ever did tell my parents about my gender. I mean I sure as heck remember my parents talking to me a lot about gender. About what I was supposed to like and not like. I remember lots of toys being purchased for me specifically to use and lots of toys that I wasn’t supposed to use. I remember a baseball kept for me, in my view, but having been told that I had not yet achieved a rank that deemed me worthy of having that ball, but one day, one day soon, I would. I would get that ball. And I would be the man that my dad had always wanted me to be.
But I wasn’t a man, I was a child. A scared, lost, lonely child. I don’t know if I ever did actually bring up my gender to my parents, but I do remember lots about gender. Maybe it was because I knew that there was something different about my gender than everyone around me, but I doubt it. I doubt it, because I just knew what I liked, and I liked Barbie and I didn’t give a damn about some stupid baseball.
I also knew I had a lump on my shoulder, and it was growing bigger and definitely not going away. It was a year later when I walked back downstairs, pointed at my arm again, and said, hey mom and dad, I’m pretty sure I have a lump on my arm and it definitely is not normal. That was when they actually slowed down enough, looked at my arm, and agreed with me. Shortly thereafter I
was in the dr’s and they were doing their doctor things. They discovered that I had a tumor on my arm. They said it was the size of a golf ball and they suggested to have it surgically removed. I could leave it but as an adult they suspected it would be the size of a grapefruit. We decided to have it removed, and of course as a child the we was my mom.
I don’t remember much about the surgery except for the iv needle in my hand hurt and they wouldn’t remove it. I begged and begged and begged for them to remove it but they would not do that without the dr’s permission. It was super lovely when I
complained the next day to the doctor and he laughingly said, oh they should have just called me. Thanks. I appreciated the validation that I was right again with the adults around me treating me like an idiot child who didn’t know anything. That felt really good. I also especially appreciated how hydrated the IV made me and that the nurses also wouldn’t let me get out of bed to use the toilet. They made me pee in a bottle. And of course the bottle overflowed and got pee all over me and my bed, which of course I was also blamed for. Gee my childhood was such a holiday!
I got out of the hospital the next day and got to go home with my arm wrapped snug as a bug. I was told that I needed to rest and try my best to not move my arm. Way easier said than done. Thus it was that weeks later when they finally removed the bandages, I was wrong yet again. The scar left by the surgery was hideous. My first glimpse of it was terrifying. They had remove the bandages and my eyes almost popped out at the row of staples running up my arm and shoulder. My mom was horrified and started asking all sorts of questions about why they used staples instead of stitches. I don’t remember the reasoning, I just remember wondering how they were going to remove them. Surgical pliers was the answer. One by one the staples were removed leaving little holes on either side of the large, angry red scar.
There was no mention of scar tape or scar cream or even using vaseline of anything. I was told, take it easy, try your best to not move your arm, you’ll be fine. I was fine. They had removed the tumor. It was benign, there was very little to no chance of recurrence, and I was done with the surgery. But I had this new bold feature on my shoulder that everybody asked me about. It became a defining feature of me to anyone who saw me with my shirt off. I tried my best to be okay with it, it became my new normal, and besides chicks dig scars, right?
I didn’t though. For me it felt like a visual reminder of my failures. Which was just one more thing that grated on me and pushed and pulled me towards hating myself and everyone else also. Why did I always ruin everything, why did I always feel so wrong, why were people always telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, why did I always get blamed?
I’ve lived for forty five years trying to ignore this visual reminder and today I got to see it go away. Well at least enough that I doubt anyone will ever ask me about it again. Technically I justified the major expense of this by telling myself and everyone that it is commemorating my thirty year career as a teacher. But once I started to see the scar disappear I began to understand that I have multiple motives for getting this tattoo.
Which is still in progress as I write this. It is the morning of day three. I have been here in Pasadena since Thursday. Two days of tattooing with today being the final. So far the number one question has been, is it painful? That short answer, yes. The longer answer is that it is not nearly as painful as carrying around this ridiculous emotional baggage since I was eight.
No Comments