I was a Mistake

Birthday

I stood in front of the full-size mirror in my very first bikini, sick to my stomach.

You look horrible.

My foster mom had bought the turquoise swimsuit just for this trip. She said it would look amazing with my almost waist length hair and green eyes. It was beautiful before I tried it on. When I put it on my body, my appearance ruined it.

Look at your scars, your ugly body.

Despite the bruises and cuts and burns that had healed, I was left with scars-visible or not-that would never go away. I felt like I was hyperventilating again.

You're too skinny.

I ate all the time, filling my body with all kinds of food. But my body was still very small. At five feet, I weighed eighty-five pounds, a lot better than most doctors suspected. Thankfully, when I hit puberty, I grew a decent sized chest and a slight butt, making my body a lot less stick-like. But everything else could not thicken up. Aside from the ugly scars I had, my body looked sickly because my ribs jutted out so far.

It didn't help that when I stood beside any of the Winters, they towered over me like giants. Even Noah, who hadn't hit his last growth spurt yet, stood at six feet tall, a foot taller than me! I sat on the bathroom floor, trying not to cry. I knew my family was waiting for me, but I felt ashamed. Momma would expect me to wear this suit. She bought it for me. I had to wear it.

They'll laugh at you. You're just too skinny. Noah will laugh at you.

"Ed, are you almost done in there?" Momma Winters probably knew I didn't want to come out. I walked to the door and opened it slightly, throwing my hand out and waving her inside. "What's wrong, baby girl?" She walked in and sat down on the toilet. I knew she could see the emotion I barely held back.

I went to her and sat beside her legs. Curling my knees to my chest. I gestured to my barely clothed body. She got what was bothering me as if I had said it out loud.

"Eden, your body is beautiful. It's perfect in its own way and it shows how brave and strong you are." She brushed my long hair out of my face.

She was wearing her own swimsuit, a two-piece that showed a sliver of her belly. She pulled up the top to show me a long scar along her stomach. "Your best friend did that to me. After three perfect labors, Noah decided he was going to be difficult. His umbilical cord was in such a way that if we tried to birth him naturally, he wouldn't get oxygen. So we had Noah through a C-section and he gave me this scar. I love it because it gave me one of my greatest loves. Without it, you and I would have a big hole in our lives, wouldn't we?"

She pulled up her top a little more to show me some scars that looked like tiger stripes. "These happened because, after four kids, my skin stretched and couldn't handle the rapid weight gain. I love these scars, my battle scars, I call them because they are signs that I held my babies inside me and protected them."

Then she pointed at some of my most noticeable scars- a large burn scar roughly the size of an apple on my leg, three slashes on my arms where my birth mother grabbed and pulled with her nails, points on my back from the whip of a studded belt. "These, my angel, are your battle scars. These are proof that you've been through something challenging and lived to show it off."

She got off the toilet seat and we sat together on the floor, not caring that we were in a bathroom. She pulled me into her arms. "I assure you, baby girl, that my boys would never say a bad word about your scars. I know for a fact that they think you are the strongest person they know. And if other people have something to say about it, not only will Noah and the other boys go to the end of the world to defend you, we'll be out of here next week and we won't even remember them."