Scars are a part of everyone’s lives.  Everybody has a scar from some point in their lives. What causes these scars and what effects do they have on our bodies? Scars come from everywhere, everyone has at least one from birth, your belly button is actually your first scar.

Many people see scars as just a natural part of life, but what if they aren’t? Every day we walk by people not knowing their stories or the battles they are facing. When many of us face struggles and battles we can gain damage through scars. However, not all scars are on the outside. Much of the world faces emotional scars such as depression, anxiety, or even PTSD. Some of these emotional scars can bring us to self-harm scars. Each one of us lives our own lives in our own worlds. What one may perceive as an easy task can be someone else’s worst nightmare. It’s the way we fight our battles that makes it or breaks it for the scars that we’ve endured.

Scars have been proven to have negative physical and emotional effects on the average person. The fact that scars not only can have a physical effect on us, as well as an emotional effect on us, creates a larger ordeal in every life. A question of importance comes in the form of, where do these scars come from?

   Every scar has a story to tell. Many stories bring happy memories of joyful childhood days, but not everyone is lucky enough to have nice or innocent stories to their scars.

As senior Jane Smith (real name withheld) said, “Some are from childhood play, some are self-inflicted from insecurities and feeling worthless, but not wanting to die”. Her emotions continue as she adds, “I’ve been bullied to the point where it caused scars”. Many students, or anyone, alike share the same problem.

   Not all scars are by accident. As time has gone on it has become more normal to have these scars occur unnaturally. These scars form in the face of self-harm. There has been much research into this. One man, in particular, named Alexander Burgemeester, a graduate in Neuropsychology,  said: “The emotions surrounding the physical scars can also leak over into the emotional and psychological and cause people significant self-image issues and lower self-esteem”

Every student in this school has a story for each of their scars. Some stories bring happy memories and yet many bring painful reminders of trying times. Every person is fighting their own battle, and whether or not those battles bring scars or not they are all still very real.

Scars are a very real part of life, they make up the stories told on our bodies. Our minds remember these memories of our lives, and our scars show the story we are trying to tell. Everyone has scars, and everyone will continue to gain scars. It has been shown that these scars do not make or break a person’s beauty, anyone can be proud or ashamed of their scars. However, the proof is that scars are a real part of life and need to be taken seriously, whether one is ashamed of their scars or not.