The Map I Carry in My Skin

I walked into the doorway.

My fingertips brushed the empty arches across my face.

“What the fuck did you do to your face?”

Her voice sliced the room.

I froze. My reflection didn’t match her horror. My hands did, trembling, precise, compulsive. I didn’t understand.

I still looked normal. Still me.

But everyone else saw it.

I was eight. My hands itched. My skin crawled. I didn’t know why I pulled at my eyebrows, only that it made something inside me stop screaming, even if just for a moment.

My mother’s shock hit like cliffs I didn’t know how to climb.

“If you have no eyebrows, you might as well shave your head and look like a cancer patient.”

I shrank. I wanted to disappear.

Later, I would see how words could leave marks that last. Later still, I would learn to navigate around them. But not yet. Not then.

The pit of my eyebrows became a river I had to cross alone. The anxiety that made my hands twitch didn’t end... it moved. When my eyebrows grew back, my hair became the next terrain: twisting, knotting, pulling. Each strand a tiny compass; each tug a moment of relief that the world would never see.

People laughed.

People whispered.

People pointed.

No one saw the unseen.

No one could.

Some nights I stayed awake, my heart racing, my hands twisting in the dark. Some mornings I brushed my hair until it hurt. Still, I kept moving. I had no choice.

Teachers said, “Relax.” Friends said, “You worry too much.” My mother said, “You’re brave, smart, beautiful,” and meant it. But words cannot calm a body that won’t stop shaking.

The shame grew quietly: a snicker here, a whisper there. Each moment carved a hollow in me that only I could feel. Some landmarks appeared overnight, sudden landslides that left me scrambling.

I learned to hide, to cover, to perform calm. But inside, rivers ran, cliffs loomed, forests tangled my compulsions until I sometimes couldn’t see the path through.

I imagine the map in front of me. The pit of my eyebrows is a hollow I pass quietly. The cliffs of her words loom above. Rivers of anxiety loop endlessly. I step over roots, avoid slippery stones, follow tracks I’ve carved for survival. Some days I do it all. Some days I fall.

I carry notebooks, friends, safe spaces. Breathing exercises are like lanterns. Tiny victories: sleeping through the night, sitting through a meal, completing a task.

Shame grows in silence. It teaches lessons no one sees: that a child can be terrified of herself, that relief can come from what seems destructive, that survival is often invisible.

I am still learning. I am still walking. I still follow rivers, cliffs, forests. I have grown careful, patient, strong, attentive. The map is mine. I know it better than anyone else could. Some days I run my fingers through a knot in my hair and remember the pit, the cliffs, the rivers. And I smile, not because it is gone, but because I have learned to move through it.

Shame is not the enemy. Anxiety is not weakness. They are guides: unyielding, precise, truthful, teaching me the shape of myself.

For the first time, I feel capable of moving forward, even if the terrain shifts, even if the rivers rise.

The map is mine.

I have walked it.

I have stumbled.

I have learned its turns.

And now, I am walking it forward.

Aware. Compassionate. Alive.

__________

Every knot, every curve, every invisible path I’ve walked is mine. This is the map I carry in my skin.