She sits quietly in front of the mirror. Studying herself for traces of the girl in the photographs she has so carefully arranged in the album. She looks for the sparkle in her eyes and finds only sorrow. She looks for the glow of joy in her skin and finds only bags and dark circles under her eyes, shoddily hidden by makeup. She wants so desperately to reconcile the two images- the girl and the woman...

But she is neither. She is trapped in between and does not recognize the person she has become. She looks back at the photo album spread before her on the bathroom counter. What happened to that girl? Is she buried beneath the pudge and flab that surrounds her body, making her look more like 40 than 18. Beneath it all is that young, exuberant smiling child still smiling? Or has she been lost with weight gain and uselessness?

Her eyes move from the reflection of her face, to the reflection of her arms. She searches for stretch marks, now hidden by a summer tan, and finds none. She turns her eyes to the glowing red lines on her shoulder. She remembers each and every one, and turns her head from the mirror to her arm. Raising one long finger she gently traces the lines then runs her hand over her shoulder, top to bottom from her shoulder to her elbow the horizontal lines making mini mountains, ridges in her arm disturbing her smooth, tan skin. Her eyes fall on the scars of older wounds... on her forearm, dark lines picked up the sun more deeply than the rest of her skin, brown lines are contrasted against her almond tan.

She runs her finger against the dark brown line, tracing its path, it is old and worn and feels no different than the rest of the skin on her arm, it feels smooth and she wonders how long it will be before her new wounds become merely part of the skin. But for now they are reminders. Reminders of pain without release.

She lifts her shirt and examines the purple stretch marks on her stomach. Sighing in disgust she traces them with her fingers. Thin lines dot her stomach as well... like the lines on her arm they are new and still have the glow of new blood.

She remembers the very first. Right after him. Right after he died. So much pain, no way to let it out. A pin provided relief as she sat in her bathroom and scratched away at her thigh until she saw the thinnest line of blood appear. With it, her pain was released, at least for a moment. Again 3 years later she sat in the same room and scratched away at her arm, unable to draw a line deep enough to end it all. For half an hour she sat tracing the same line on her arm with a safety pin until blood began to rise to the surface. Then she stopped, unable to draw far enough that blood spilled over. Just the thinnest line of red was needed to stop the pain.

Thin lines of pain all over her body now. She hides them from the concern of others. Her thighs are a maze of lines, and her shoulder requires her to wear t-shirts at all times despite the increasing heat of summer. No one can know. It is her secret lie... while her face smiles she cries inside, dying... waiting until the moment when she can be alone... to draw more lines to release her emotional pain in exquisite physical torment.

She looks back to the mirror... and wonders what became of that girl...