Empower | Katerina’s Story | Lawton Oklahoma Portrait Photographer

It all started one summer afternoon, it’s amazing how you can just remember every detail of one event. I still see the door, the keys I used to open it. 
I was three years old, spending the summer at my grandma’s house with my uncle. She was making dinner, I got bored and wanted to go outside. So I snuck out. I knew that my uncle was with his friends outside, they all where around seventeen years old. I don’t know what happened after that, I don’t know if I found him or what. All I know is that he found me, and saved my life by rolling me on the ground. He had burns on his hands from saving me. Someone, somehow set me on fire. The only person who knows what happened is my uncle, but he has PTSD from that incident, that he doesn’t remember what happened.

I have scars on my face and arms. I had a jacket and under shirt on that day, that saved me from having burns all over the rest of my body. I spent most of my childhood in the hospital, going from surgery to surgery. That made my childhood pretty lonely. Most of my friends during that time were patients too. So seeing people with burns, or missing limbs is normal to me. 
I don’t remember most of my surgeries, I do remember the doctors asking me what kind of story I wanted to dream about, and I always chose Cinderella. Once I went in for a kind of small surgery, alternation to my bottom lip. We didn’t have a car then, so my mom and I had to take the train back home, that was the first time when I noticed people looking at me. Well a small girl with blood and stitches on her face, I guess I would look as well. The last big surgery happened when I was 16, new technology came, laser technology . It was one of the worst experiences I had. I couldn’t go in the sun for a month, keeping my scars wet with a special cream which I had to wash off every evening with salty water, so imagine putting salt into open wounds on half of your face, every day for a month.

I have to say that most of my experiences where good, but once I went to a different plastic surgeon, and when I asked what else can we do, she asked me what more do I want, that I look good already. 
I can say that I got lucky that I was a little child, I don’t know how not to have scars now. A life without scars is unknown to me. One day one of my school friends asked me “how are you doing it, just walk on the street, I would cover myself up ” and I asked her if I should start to wear a ski mask? So with scars on the face, you can’t do anything, there is no way to cover them up. 

Of course I have some trouble still, people looking at me all the time. When I was teenager I never had a boyfriend, who would want to have a girl with scars all over. And later in life I had some boyfriends, but basically all the men in my life just used me. I was just happy that someone wanted me, I let them abuse me happily. And then I got married. And he beat me, psychically tortured me. I let him for five years, I was so scared to leave  him. I was scared to be alone. Until one sunny summer day. I left him. Since then I’m working on knowing my own value knowing that I deserve to be loved.