Hi Locust:

I feel like I can relate really well to what you're saying. I have huge gross scars on my left arm from when I was born. It sort of looks like my arm was mangled, and for a while that part of my arm was bigger and puffier than the rest of my arm, so it was extremely noticeable.

For the longest time, in high school and a while after, I just wore long sleeves everywhere and never talked to anyone about it. Eventually, I had plastic surgery to make it more slender like the rest of my arm.

What it took for me was finding people that didn't care and didn't think about it like I did. My boyfriend thought it was pretty cool - like a "battle scar", sort of. He sometimes shows it off to his friends, like "Dude, check out my girlfriend's arm, isn't this awesome?" Having the surgery really helped, because I feel as though it's significantly less noticeable. A lot of my friends think it's sort of neat because the scars are in the shape of Z's, backwards. I've noticed that when my boyfriend leans his head against that arm, it fits perfectly with the contours of his face.

So my advice, I guess, would be to keep in mind that everything you think you're insecure about, there's someone else who will think it's neat. My friend used to be overweight, and he lost a lot of weight, and now he can pull his skin like a foot away from his body. He showed me and I thought it was so cool, like he could make himself a little basket, it's fun to pull on, it's soft to the touch, I think it's great, even though he doesn't like it so much.

My other advice is, as hard as it sounds, try to change the way you think about it. For me, in particular, that meant not letting myself leave the house everyday in longsleeves, actually wearing a bathing suit to swim in instead of like a sweater. Sort of, I am who I am and this is what I'm working with, so I better work it as much as I can mentality.

Hope any of that helped.