She waited.

I smiled.

“And failed.” And I watched her take that in — watched her turn it over, this idea that the scar was not the record of her victimhood but the record of her survival, not proof that she had been hurt but proof that she had outlasted the hurting.

It is the only thing I have ever had to offer the people who come up to me and touch their own scars, and I offer it every time, because someone offered it to me once and it saved my life a second time, long after the bullet.

Your scar is not the mark of what was done to you.

It is the mark of the fact that you are still here to be asked about it.

The people who tried to write the ending did not get to.

You did.

You lived, and the living is the whole of the answer, and every scar you carry is only your body’s stubborn way of insisting on it.

THE END.