Lean On Me #Wattys2016

Part 24

Ashlyn

I run all the way home. I don't stop and wait for it to be my turn to cross, only look for traffic and then time it so I can run between the cars. My face is cold in the night air and the tears on my cheeks feel hot as they slip down and fall from my jaw. It's all too much. It's too overwhelming. I'm too invested.

It shouldn't have mattered that he freaked out on me. We are just now getting to know each other so he doesn't owe me anything. I knew about his thigh, but as much as it must feel like the most important thing in his life, sitting there with him I'd already forgotten about it. It's not like his injury made him unlovable or disgusting. I tried to be understanding at first, but knowing he sees his injury as something to be embarrassed of or that I'd be repulsed if I felt it beneath my hand really hit too close to home.

I take my front steps two at a time, pulling my keys from my purse which is slung across my body. Once inside, I toss my keys on the kitchen counter and start stripping off my clothing. It's clinging to my sweating skin and making me feel claustrophobic. I rip my shirt over my head, unclasp and toss my bra in just a second and then shimmy out of my panties and pants. I turn on the shower and let the water heat up until the bathroom begins to fill with steam.

There was once I time I couldn't look at myself naked either. I remember just after the crash, the way my body had felt disgusting—something that once was mine that I no longer recognized. I'd worked hard to overcome that cognitive distortion. Now I can look in the mirror or run my hand along the bumpy scars without worrying that they make me less human or ugly. I turn away from the mirror, but look back at it over my shoulder. The long raised scar starts just below my right shoulder blade and gashes towards my spine in a jagged path.

Maybe it helps that I can't really touch it myself. I can only look at it and imagine the way it might feel to my own hand or someone else's. What I do know is how the one on the back of my calf feels to my touch. I've ran my fingers along it so many times over the last six years that I've memorized every bump and each hard knot. It's pink now, a lighter color than the previous purple it once was. It runs from just beneath the back of my knee to the inside of my ankle.

I remember the pain there after the sound of crumpling metal had stopped and I was trapped upside down, hanging from my seat by the seatbelt that had saved my life. Blood trickled from the cut and dripped off my knee, landing on the bashed in roof of the car as the sirens rang out in the distance. I hadn't felt the pain in my back from the slice of metal that had pierced my seat from behind and dug in as the car behind ours pushed the trunk all the way up to my back. I know what it's like to be scarred. I know what it's like to think you will never be the same person.

We started our relationship from the wrong direction. We should have gotten to know each other first. He should have heard about the accident and the wounds it caused so that I might have learned how ugly he thought scars were. Had I known that scars were so horrifying to him that he couldn't even deal with his own, I would have never started anything with him. I close my eyes and turn my head back around. I play through all of our encounters, shaking my head at how awful the whole thing might have gone if he's seen the scars I've worn for a long, long time. Watching him be so turned off by his own, I know that if he'd seen mine it would have been just as horrible or even worse.

I step into the shower and let the water wash over me. It's been a long time since I've felt ugly, but tonight that is exactly how I feel. The scars that have been a part of me for years now feel like marks of unworthiness and I reach for the rag hanging over the spout and lather it with soap. I run it along my skin, pressing hard to try and wash away the ugly puckering of skin at the very end of the scar on my leg. I know the tears are streaming from my eyes, but I don't stop. I scrub and scrub until I finally collapse on the shower floor, rolling into a ball and letting out all the tears I thought I'd never have to shed again.

Mateo might have been trying to protect me from his scars, but he inflected new ones on my heart, my soul, and my delicate sense of security with my own body. When the water runs cold I don't care that my roommate Rhett is working nights, because right now I want to be covered instead of making my usual naked walk to my room. It's a need to hide that I thought I'd gotten over. I wrap my towel around my body and head for my room. I chose a long pair of pajama bottoms and a thick shirt that I know will cover the thick damaged skin. I climb under my covers and close my eyes tight, praying that in the morning I'll get out of my bed after a night of forgetting all about Mateo. 

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