Day 6 - Scar Story

Scar Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The mirror doesn’t lie.  That’s what’s so annoying about the mirror.

Alexandra didn’t like what she saw.  The mirror was fogged from trapping shower steam, but the truth was clear enough.  Her body had been wrecked by the accident.

She scanned over her naked body, studying what she already knew too well.  She went in no particular order.  Memory, like time, is hardly ever linear.  In any given moment what bothered her most was simply what bothered her most in any given moment.  Her eyes pierced her very existence and it left her melancholy.  She ran her fingers across her body, feeling over every scar.  She could remember some of the stories.  Others had long since been forgotten.

Her knee would never been the same.  Years of soccer had seen to that.  She enjoyed running on open grass, but the dives, the diving was what really did you in.  All it took was a simple little rock or two and a slide tackle turned into a bloody mess.  There were stitches along her shin that lay evidence to that fact.  She had been too competitive and played too hard too often.  There were probably a concussion or two somewhere inside that thick skull of hers that she would regret later in life, but you couldn’t see those.  The scars were right in front of you.

She had been too skinny in high school.  And then too heavy in college.  And then too skinny again.  The stretch marks on her hips and thighs and bottom wouldn’t let her forget the radical swings. 

She pulled at her hair.  It seemed dry and thin.  And her scalp was flaky.  She hoped it was not a new skin condition.  Maybe she just needed a new shampoo.  Her collar bone seemed pronounced.  Her ribs were too well defined.  Her cheek bones were over-exaggerated.  She felt weak all over.

She had been losing weight – a lot of it.  She didn’t want to stop.  She didn’t want the reminder.

Varicose veins; unwanted, unappreciated.  Those seemed unfair and unnecessary.

Her nipples were darker.  Was that permanent?

There were other scars that no one could see.  The invisible scar is the worst scar of all.  Her body would never be the same.  She knew that.  In her mind, she knew it fully.  In her heart, she was not happy with that at all.  Her body would never be the same.

The accident had ruined her body and there weren’t going to be any rectifications.  Life doesn’t care and wasn’t going to be making reparations any time soon.

But the accident wasn’t her life.  She didn’t believe that for an instant.  Life was full of ups and downs and joys and pains.  It was full of success and failure and happy accidents.  Inside there might be a broken heart and broken dreams and there were things that would never, could never be the same again, but ultimately she still had life.

Life had been a glorious adventure.  Accidents aside, that was a pretty fair deal.  Life was compensation enough.