When I see my doctor for my three-month post-surgery checkup, he looks at the horizontal scars that stretch across either side of my chest where my breasts used to be and, looking troubled, asks me why I haven’t been using Mederma (a gel to help fade the scars).

I laugh because I have no idea what to say. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it, and it’s not that I’m too lazy. How do I explain to a plastic surgeon, a man who spends his life making people feel more beautiful, striving for perfection, that my glaringly obvious purple scars are two of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen?

How do I explain that making a daily ritual out of trying to hide them is a way of acting out and internalizing the hatred for my body that is experienced by myself, and so many other transsexual people?

How do I explain that for me personally, erasing my scars is a metaphor for a much larger picture of trying to erase my past?

There have been times I have wanted to do just that.

To pretend the girl who existed in my skin for 16 years was nothing but an illusion, a ghost, an irrelevant part of my history.

Because of the testosterone I have taken, and the surgery I have had, she is nowhere to be found. Neither seen, nor heard.

I’ve even been able to erase the paper trail, changing my name, driver’s license and Social Security card. But like secret files revealed years later or a great fossil found in an archaeological dig, I can cover her up with as many layers as I want, but I cannot erase her past, my past.

Some days, this very thought troubles me to no end. I am so conflicted, but deep down I feel that to erase these scars is to erase years of joy, learning and love.

The years that I struggled with my gender were not all bad. I played in championship baseball games, took family vacations and welcomed a younger sister into the world.

So the scars stay; a private reminder of what was. Out in the world, no one is any the wiser to their existence or my past. My truth is something for only those closest to me, and myself. When I am alone, I am not so troubled by them anymore. They are simply there. She’s undoubtedly gone, but my scars remain like a trail of footsteps she left behind.

-Skyler Clarke, 19, is a resident of Long Beach.