Yesterday I wore black footless tights under my dress to hide the huge scars on my leg.  Someone said, They’re hardly visible, and I felt comforted.

I’m not Padma Lakshmi.   I admire her; she stands regally, arms bared, and dismisses any thought of concealing the ragged proof of injury on her arm. I have avoided sporting my physical scars for the world to see; and I’m not gorgeous, rich, and talented.   My emotional scars hover just on the edge of visibility.  I have always supposed that to be raw enough.

But it’s my get-real decade.  Though short skirts frighten me,  I think I might need to bare these bones.   I’ve gotten a little braver over the last few years.   Having nothing to lose and being on the downhill side of life pushes me to the shameless region where I no longer worry about going without make-up.  In some ways, I feel invisible.  With no one watching, what does it matter how I look or what I do?

I earned my scars honestly.  An uninsured Iranian citizen in a VW plowed into me and threw me skyward.  I rolled into a ball and came down hard, landing on his hood and smashing into his windshield knee-first, shattering my right leg.  Two decades later, the knee gave out and had to be replaced.  The first surgery gave me sixteen stitches and repaired 32 breaks.  The second surgery got me this cursed artificial joint and bought me seven weeks in the hospital and an even larger scar.  I watched the patient channel for hours when I could not sleep, learning about the new micro-surgery which would eventually replace the invasive procedure by which I had been made semi-whole again.

I don’t think of myself as having been victimized by the guy who ran over me except that he badgered me in the hospital, trying to get me to sign a release hand-written on a piece of notebook paper.  Hospital security ousted him.  Years later, he had a ticket on my docket in the courtroom where I prosecuted.  I recused myself but it didn’t matter; he failed to appear and a warrant issued.  I don’t know what became of him.  Maybe he went back to Iran; maybe he died in the war.  Maher Altalathina.  He told me, The sun hit my eyes. He said he never saw me.  That made two of us:  I never saw him, either.  I just stepped from the curb and the next thing I knew, an ephemeral being whispered to me, It’s not your time to die yet, and pushed me back downward with her gentle hand.

09 February 1982.  A day when I changed forever.  I hear people scoff at the fears of others, saying, Don’t be afraid — after all, any of us can die crossing the street at any time.   No kidding.  I wonder if they know how true that is; how narrowly one escapes death on a daily basis.

I feel a sense of liberation having decided to bare my knees and show my scars.  I think there must be an emotional equivalent in this blogging.  If you read this every day you might wonder, Who hurt her?  Who loved her? Whom did she love? What does she value? What brought her joy; what made her cry? I tell you now, it does not matter how I got my scars.   I tell myself:  I am not less beautiful because of them.

It’s the tenth day of the thirtieth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.