In an interview, the Israeli writer David Grossman talked about the tattooed number his aunt had on her arm, a reminder of her incarceration in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, the Shoah.
“When I got married, my aunt covered her number with a sticking plaster, so as not to cast gloom over the day, and I must tell you that is still one of the strongest memories of my wedding. My heart flew out to her. I thought: how terrible it is that you feel you must be apologetic about what was done to you.”
I was branded by my Master, on 28 February 2009. It was a Saturday night and it was the first time we ever met. We were probably too hasty in doing what we did, but that is how it goes with people’s dreams. When they realize they are living out their dream, there is very little they can do to negate the truth of what is happening, to be rational, to think about facts. The dream has its own momentum, its own power and it carries one away, to the farthest recesses of the mind, where one becomes a tyrant or a lamb within a minute.
A year and a half later, I was “dumped”, as a prospective owner called the release. The prospective owner met with the fate he deserved. He failed to combine sensitivity with the esthetics of sadism. My respect and arousal disappeared instantly. Those two usually go together. Lose one and you will lose the other, faster than lightning strikes. A release is the right of every Owner, even if done whimsically, out of a sudden realization that the dream has turned to a nightmare, or just because a flying bird has just discovered it has no wings, and plunges down to darkness, in impotence and defeat.
I went on my way. It did not matter. It was then that some friends noticed the scar on my right shoulder and said it looked ugly. It was true that it had swollen as time had gone by and it had turned into a very ugly scar. I started feeling bad about it. In the beginning I tried to wear clothes that hid it. Later on, I went to a plastic surgeon. He tried to make the scar disappear, by injecting the inflamed tissue with cortisone. I went to the hospital for three months in a row, and every time the doctor gave me five or six painful injections, inside the scar. There we were, in that tiny room, me and my accomplice, trying to annihilate the past. Trying to peel off what I am, what I have become. From the first time, the swelling went down and the scar started to disappear, turning into a white, very discrete mark.
Can I really stop being what I am, with a few injections of cortisone? And what am I, even if I am released, even if I am branded with a mark that has lost its symbolism, since it has lost the man that went with it, what am I even if am alone, in the coziness of my room, with a wound between my legs and a disappearing scar on my right shoulder? Am I really different from the woman I was on that Saturday, 28 September 2009?
Why was the survivor of the Shoah ashamed of her tattoo? And why did I go to the doctor to make my past disappear?
We should wear our marks with pride. We should never be ashamed of what has left its indelible mark on us. We should be proud of everything that has made us what we are today.
Bear your scars with pride. Prepare for new ones. Chase your dreams without despairing, and be yourself, to the END.
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