Scarred for Life

[14KBlaqWmn]

Have you ever thought about how your words/actions or lack of words/actions will scar someone emotionally?

One particular instance comes to mind. I know someone who is self-conscience about his height and his complexion. When he was growing up, he was made fun of because he was smaller than the other boys and was dark-skinned. Now that he's a man, he feels that he's still not up to par with other men his age. The reason why he feels this way now, is that some women have stigmatized him with some of the same things he was ridiculed with as a child. It has gotten to his self-esteem to the point that he tries to compensate for it in other ways. I try to reassure him and it does make him feel better and his confidence does increase, but then someone says something stupid and it's back to square one.

It's easy to say that when these things happen to let go and move on, but the point is that situations like this can cause scars to cut as deep as the boo-boo you got on your knee as a child. Sure the wound closed, but the scar is still there and won't go away. Same goes for emotional scars....you can have closure, but the scar is still there.

If you've been a victim of emotional scarring, did you get over it....completely? Please share your experience(s).

[mystkev]

From elementary - high school I was always told that I was ugly and that I looked like a boy. I would be in class and people would just start talking about me. I could never understand this,b/c I was always nice to people. I had had the chicken pox really bad when I was 10 and people used to make fun of my face. I wore braids so people called me Milli Vanilli. I had a white boyfriend so I was an Oreo. I never cried about the things they said, but I did not have enough confidence at that time to realize that these things were not true. I have always kept to myself for fear that I would be rejected in the same way that my peers rejected me.

Now five years later, I am still shocked when people say that I am pretty. I feel uncomfortable, undeserving of that description.I am realizing that I am cute, a lot of those girls were just jealous (in hs I was all breasts, skinny everywhere else). But one thing that has stayed w/me is always feeling like I am being watched or that people are talking about me. Each day I become more confident in myself, but it still hurts that people were so mean, even though I was sweet as pie.

[Babygirl]

but I have ALWAYS been real, real, real short. I am 4'11 and when I was younger I was always the shortest one in my class(grade) and I used to get called smurf, or midget, or dwarf. In all my yearbooks from school, people started their memory off as : To Dawn: A Short, and sweet...... like that(being short) was all to my being. I used to have a serious complex about it, but now I love being the height I am.

[shtalker]

^^^Bump^^^