On the meaning of my stretch marks

Some days when I'm standing naked in front of the mirror, I become an archaeologist.

I notice the (many) stretch marks on this body and I investigate them as artifacts: leftover materials that may offer some insight into the past of this body and the person who inhabited it before I did. They require detailed study. I squint to observe where on the body they are located; several heavy anchors running from the upper corners of my breasts toward my underarms, with many lighter and less visible parallel and intertwining branches running down over the bulge of my stomach, sides, and lower back. I raise an arm to discover an entire array of lines cascading down my underarm and then rounding back up, reaching toward the top of my breast. I am certain there are others I haven't discovered because of the intensity with which I'm studying them.

My fingertips trace the full lengths of these lines with varying thickness, trying to learn something. They feel like grooves that have been carved into elastic; qualitatively different from the surrounding skin.

I wonder when my body started to change enough to create these lines. I wonder about the person I was before I earned them. I do, in fact, mean "earn". I look at them, and what I see manifest before my eyes is change. These lines are proof of the change of my physical body over time. They bring a sense of comfort because there is nowhere I can look to visibly confirm the other changes I know I've gone through during my life; the emotional and mental growth I've experienced is invisible to my eyes. But while tracing my stretch marks, I see a young girl, emotionally abandoned, become an extremely insecure and emotionally unstable teenager, become -- something closer to who I am now. Someone who still struggles constantly with her history and the lessons she has internalized along the way. Someone who will likely be fighting depression for the rest of her life. But someone who has a far better grasp and understanding of herself, her struggles, and the tools at her disposal than former versions of herself.

I do not find my stretch marks as unsightly or unwanted as the beauty industry might prefer. They are too representative of change to me: sometimes painful to consider, sometimes difficult to accept, but always inevitable and valuable in ways I could not previously anticipate.