For months those scarves had been my constant companions, the thing I reached for before leaving the house, the daily small surrender to the idea that what had happened to me was mine to hide so that other people would not have to see it.

And now, at the threshold of the courtroom, I folded one away for the last time.

I was not going to spend another hour of my life managing other people’s comfort at the cost of my own truth.

I was going to walk into that room with my scars in the open, on my own terms, in a dress I had chosen, and let the whole world see exactly what I had survived.

The scarf had been the uniform of the woman they thought they had broken.

I would not need her anymore.