Empty Lives

Everywhere I look I see models. In shop windows, ads online, and as I’m scrolling through Instagram. I see their tan, airbrushed skin, the way their hair falls so perfect, framing their unmarked face. My reflection stares back through the glass and I see the scars from years of acne, a random freckle here and there, the scar in my eyebrow, a dimple that dents my cheek when I smile. I don’t have the bronze, flawless complexion of a model. My skin could be compared to a vampire during the winter and turns flaming red in the summer sun. They don’t have scars or freckles to show that they have done anything but exist in front of a camera.

Everyone I meet says I look like my mom, and when I was younger, the thought appalled me. How could I look like someone thirty-six years older than me? She has crow’s feet that stretch out and a dimple that dents her cheek whenever she smiles, lines from years of hearty laughter at dinner parties, and freckles from benign skin cancer after countless vacations to the beach and days of lounging in the sun. On her right shoulder blade, is a figure of a buffalo. It is big and bold, like her personality, and represents the pride she has for her hometown. Hidden beneath the buffalo, though, is my favorite tattoo. Marvin the Martian. A little figure that she printed on her skin when she was younger and probably later regretted after the colors began to fade. So, she covered up with something more meaningful, something to show people where she comes from.

Each year, I feel like I grow closer and closer to being like my mom. Senior year of high school I had a mountain range inked onto my right shoulder blade. Printed below are the coordinates of my childhood ski hill. If someone asked, I wouldn’t be able to tell them the actual numbers, and I can’t even see it unless I look in a mirror. But I know it’s there.

I hated that hill, still do. It was an Olympic venue. For the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympic Games. It hosted the men’s and women’s giant slalom ski races but now is home to aspiring racers who hope to one day make it to the Olympics. I was one of those kids. I stood at the top of the hill, looking out over the rest of the mountain, unable to see what lies just beyond the drop.

Run after run I threw myself down the hill, trusting that there would be something over the edge to catch me, and there always was. All the ski hills after that one seemed like cake. I could see the pitch ahead of me and where I was going. With every run, every crash, and every mistake, the hill made me stronger. It molded me, it became a piece of me, a past life that I had to leave but will always remember.

The models don’t have tattoos, and they don’t have scars either. There is nothing on their skin to map out the journey of their life. Every scar I have tells a story. The white bumps on my knees are tales of crazy bike accidents and the dents in my shins are painfully embarrassing memories I wish to erase but can’t. Memories of Razor scooters slamming into my leg and box jumps that I missed by inches. Some scars I can’t even see, but can remember the accident all the same. My first scar is one that I can only see if I look in the mirror.

I am jumping on my parents’ bed. It is the perfect size for jumping; a huge king-sized bed with plenty of pillows to fall into. From the living room, my dad yells at me, telling me to quit jumping before I fall and crack my head open like an egg. He tells me that a lot, it never happens. I jump again, and again, and again. I get higher and higher with every bounce until thwak! An off-balanced jump sends me flying off the bed. My forehead slams into the wooden dresser and I am on the floor. Blood gushes from the split in my forehead and I cry for my dad. He rushes me to the hospital and I leave with 12 stitches in my forehead.

Hide-n-seek is the game of choice in the recess yard and as the seeker begins to count, we all scatter. I see someone go behind the brick wall and another disappear behind a tree. I make a b-line for the crowded playground. It was like a disturbed anthill. Kids swarm the monkey bars and the bridge, two people race up the slide, even more scamper up the climbing wall. Here, in the midst of chaos, they will never find me. I push through the swarm on the bridge and creep up the final ladder to the top of the tube slide. From my spot, I have a view of the entire recess yard. I can see the recess monitors in their bright orange vests scolding kids for trying to climb on top of the tube slide, one is helping a kid with a bloody nose who slipped while playing four-square. I watch as the seeker finds the kid hiding behind the tree, that was a dumb spot to hide. My heart starts to beat as they make their way toward my spot. I don’t stop to wonder if I have been seen yet. I crouch down low and make my way back to the ladder and the bridge. I go slow, careful to not be seen as I make my way down the ladder.

Years later, the scar in my forehead cuts a slit through my eyebrow and the left side of my lip is still slightly larger than the right. One Christmas, my grandma showed me how to fill in the slit through my eyebrow. Excited to wear makeup for the first time ever, I looked in the mirror to see my magnificent transformation. I expected to look like a princess or beauty queen but all I saw was me, with a small part missing.

At the pediatrician, I sit on the bench. My sweaty hands stick to the wafer-thin layer of paper that covers the green cushions. I shift from side to side as she takes my blood pressure, checks my temperature, and listens to my heartbeat. My mom is there too, talking to my doctor as she goes through the tasks. They chat about adult things like the weather and how the family is doing. I am uninterested. I just want to get this doctor’s appointment over with. My mom says something that makes my doctor laugh as she kneels to check my reflexes. She grabs the little hammer and taps my knee once, twice, good. The other side, tap once, twice, pause.

“What happened here?” she points to the birthmark on my leg.

I tell her it's a birthmark. She should know that she has been my doctor since I was a baby. But she nods and continues my checkup without any more thought for the red splotch on my leg.

Birthmarks are simply that; marks caused at birth when blood vessels don’t form correctly; there could be too many or they could be wider than usual. This abnormality results in red patches on the skin, and if you’re a model, you are probably immune to any abnormality. Some believe that birthmarks are more than just an abundance of blood vessels. Some believe that a birthmark is a “maternal impression” made by the mother when she touches that particular spot on her body during an emotional time. Others think that they are a result of what the mother ate while she was pregnant. Some theories point to supernatural myths. Birthmarks could be a sign of how someone died in their past life. Depending on the shape and color of the birthmark, they can connect it to fatal injuries like stab wounds, flame or burn parks, and circular marks that could indicate a bullet wound.

Maybe the red splotch on my shin isn’t just a random mark. Maybe it is another scar. Remnants of a poisoned dagger that was driven into my leg in a past life. Or from a deadly snake bite. Maybe I was a war hero who had their leg amputated after a piece of shrapnel was lodged inside. Maybe I was a tree.

The tree, a giant oak guarded the border of the forest and the human world. It lived for centuries and provided a home for birds to nest in the summer and squirrels to live in the winter. Its leaves helped shield the deer and elk that bolted into the forest during harsh rains and blizzards. The tree even made friends with the humans. The tree’s friends didn’t like that very much, but they couldn’t help but love the kids that came to play in its branches. It would catch them when they fell and created a secret place when their parents called for them to come home and finish their homework. One kid loved the tree’s branches so much that he built a treehouse high within the confines of the leaves. He and his friends would spend hours on end playing games in the fort and teasing the neighborhood girls who tried to enter. That annoyed the tree, so they dropped a branch on the side of the fort. They stopped teasing the girls after that.

Eventually, the kids grew up and left the fort to rot and the tree had to drop the heaving molding wood to the ground. As the years went on, squirrels and birds came and went, deer greeted it, and nibbled on its bark while elk raked their antlers against the tree. It watched as the humans began to build closer and venture into the forest to find food and wood. The tree would cry as its friends fell, their branches groaning in sorrow. It knew it's time to fall would come soon, but it accepted its fate. The tree knew its life had been long enough and as the human struck the trunk with a heavy metal ax, the tree fell peacefully, knowing it was giving its life so another could carry on.

The life force that lived inside the tree, is the same one that lives inside me. Everything the tree valued is locked into my soul as well. The mark on my leg is a reminder of where the ax first struck, where the tree fell after centuries of giving, to give one last time.

We are sitting on the couch, my legs draped over him as we watch a movie. We have been together for almost a year now and we have sat like this countless times. He knows about the scars on my knees and the dents in my shins. Whenever my socks are off, he laughs at the bone spurs on my heels and the sixth toe from years of shoving my feet into too-tight ski boots, climbing shoes, and bike cleats. He pokes at the scars sometimes, connects the dots from one white stripe to another. I am surprised when he suddenly pauses the movie and grabs my leg, examining it closely. What has he found this time? Another bike scar? A constellation of freckles in the shape of a smiley face? An unclipped toenail? A singular hair on my knee that I missed shaving for the third time in a row?

“What’s this?” he points to a red splotch on my shin.

I look at him and slowly pull my leg away, but he grips it tighter, bent on knowing. Nobody should be that intrigued with a mark on a leg. I tell him it’s a birthmark and he shakes his head, insisting that it couldn’t be. He says that he has never seen it before and that it is a bruise or a rash. I roll my eyes at him and play the movie.

“It’s just a birthmark.”

He continues to examine it, enthralled with each flaw he finds. My scars are a roadmap down the history of my life. Each white scar and discolored patch of skin, every dent and stretch mark tell of a different time. They tell of a past life that built me. I don’t need the airbrushed skin of a model who makes her living in impossible perfection. I have my birthmarks, my scars, my stretch marks, my tattoo, and soon, I’ll have laughter lines and crow’s feet that sprout out from my eyes that paint the picture of my past lives.