"This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections."

— Saint Augustine

Imperfections. Just about everyone has them. They can be anything from acne to a cleft lip. No matter how small they seem to others, I guarantee that you can feel like the world’s biggest disfigurement sometimes,.

Some are extremely common like uneven breasts, acne, or a crooked smile. Others are less common. Me? I’ve got imperfections you probably haven’t ever heard of, and you know what? I sometimes find myself reveling in them. They make me unique, and frankly, sometimes they seem pretty cool, given the implications.

I think the most noticeable is probably my crooked smile. It’s one I had a bit of a hand myself in creating. I went through a period where I hadn’t smiled in so long, I couldn’t remember the last time I had, and when I began smiling again, it was as though the muscles had atrophied, or I’d forgotten how. It looked a lot more like a snarl than a grin.

Now, though, I’ve gotten better at it. The right side of my lips always pulls up farther than my left, though. It gives me what I like to think of as a roguish crooked grin that seems to charm people, although I suspect they find it more cute than roguish.

If people were more inclined to glance casually at feet, they would probably notice that I walk almost exclusively on my toes, and my gait is a toe to heel motion, rather than a heel to toe one. That’s because I have a handful of deformities in my feet and legs.

The odd gait and stance are caused by foreshortened muscles in my calves. It’s physically painful to completely flatten my feet, in fact, when I stand with my heels on the floor, I lean back almost imperceptibly. It’s enough to take the tension off the strained tendons. My feet themselves have extra bone or bone-like growths in them as well, according to the doctors who took stock of my deformities. I don’t notice them all that much, since I don’t really spend large portions of my day staring at my feet, but the bone is thicker, it seems, where they have to take more weight due to my curious gait. I find the combination of deformities to be absolutely fascinating, and oftentimes find myself wondering if one didn’t happen to accommodate the other.

It’s that particular deformity that gives me an advantage in instances where I find the need to duck and dodge. Since I’m already on my toes, I have a wider range of motion than those with their feet planted firmly on the ground. I can dance out of the way if someone tries to grab for me or lash out at me, although that’s not a particularly common situation anymore. Now, more often than not, my skill for dodging is often employed to keep my legs from being taken out from under me by cats at play or to dance out of the way of customers and wait staff at work or while out to eat.

My breasts are particularly small as well, which isn’t necessarily an imperfection even though a large portion of society seems to think it is. Having small breasts means that they don’t bounce painfully when I run, they don’t get in the way when I hug or cuddle, I don’t have to wear a bra if I don’t want to, and they don’t need support to be perky. Their size also makes it much easier for me to bind them and appear masculine. I don’t have to sacrifice oxygen to look how I want to look, and I’m pretty fond of oxygen.

Some of my imperfections are pretty easy to hide. For instance, I have a birthmark that, had I been born in a less scientific era, could have gotten me labeled a werewolf. People who see it are often taken aback and ask what it is, but frankly, I think it’s pretty cool. The particular type of birthmark was known as a “mark of Cain”. How many people can say they were born with the mark of a werewolf? It’s a pretty fun piece of trivia from the past, and it can make for interesting conversation, even if having it in combination with a skin allergy to silver occasionally got me teased.

I think my favorite of my oddities however is one only known to my lover and the select few I’ve told or shown. I have a “mane” of long, fine, pale hair down my spine that’s only particularly noticeable by running fingers over it. It’s soft, like fur almost, and I suspect it’s a result of my genetic condition, but I can’t really explain what makes a person grow hair like that. The fact that it’s super-pale is also odd, since the rest of my hair is dark. I don’t think I’d like it as much if it looked like body hair normally does, but since it’s so fine and soft that it’s almost unnoticeable, I enjoy it for it’s sheer weirdness. It makes me curious about my genetic history.

So, there you have it. I’m a genetic oddball with a curious mix of visible deformities, and yet I actually have a pretty healthy body image. I’m not going to pass any of this on, so why should I let it bother me. It makes me unique and different.

Plus, if I get bored, I can pretend I’m a werewolf for kicks. Since I identify with the wolf as a spirit animal anyway, having physical traits associated with them is pretty cool. Maybe it was genetic oddities like me that started the whole werewolf thing to begin with. I can’t help but wonder if any of my ancestors had the same traits, and where they came from.