In the meat markets of Edinburgh and the flesh courts of Aberdeen, I remember people unashamed of their skin. Unafraid of the judgement of each passing eye. They went shirtless in the blistering cold, all pecs and abs. All flex, few flabs.

In summers long past, I remember shirts being optional in the summer’s heat. And yet, in growing up, a shirt became a must. Long sleeved ideally, so that all that remained to hint at the wreckage beneath were my chin and my wrists disappearing into the darkness at collar and cuff.

When I wake up in the morning, I look at myself in the mirror. Normally, I see a shattered knuckle of flesh, and immediately begin to study the wall behind me. Today, I saw myself. If it were a Disney movie, it would be like the scars fell away, like the Beast becoming human at the end of Beauty and the Beast. But it was nothing like so poetical as that. Suddenly I could see myself inside the scars. Not just a knuckled prison of flesh.

I tried to capture the moment with my phone, the first time a photo has been taken of my upper torso that wasn’t destined for a medical journal. But as I fumbled with my phone, realising that I couldn’t take a photo with only one hand, my arms crossed my chest and suddenly any grace and poise vanished, and once again I was facing a clumsy flesh golem, wearing my face.