I like my scars and the stories they tell. I have one on my inner right angle. I once got so angry at my younger brother that I put my foot through a glass pane on the door as I misaimed whilst kicking it shut. It was painful at the time and then it became terribly funny, though my parents are still not quite able to find the incident amusing.
I have another one on my left knee that I like to look at from time to time. When I was sixteen, I had a passionate holiday romance. Three years my senior and working in the hotel boathouse, Kevin was an exciting escapade that could easily have graced daytime television. I spent two weeks slipping out of my shared hotel room to spend hours intertwined on the beach in the cool windy darkness and lived for the stolen kisses during the daily boat trips. It was during one of those secretive trysts off the snorkelling boat that I slipped and fell on a patch of coral. At the time, my knee was barely grazed but strangely, the mark has never faded. I enjoy its seeming permanence that never lets me forget an adventure so beautiful and yet so insignificant years later.
Ironically, recent events have left nothing indelible for me to gaze upon: tear stains dry on cheeks, bitten nails grow back stronger and weight is forever lost only to later be regained. I get on with my daily life, a dress size smaller (oh the silver linings of appetite loss…) and my inner cynic more than a few sizes larger and yet I appear unscathed as all those around me see only the tip of the iceberg I have become.
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