There are events in life that change you forever. Some make you a better person, others can make you change the way you look at the world, and others can scar you for life. Melinda Sordino had a scarring moment that changed the way she looked at the world and would eventually make her a stronger person. Her whole rest of her life she will always have her scars, scars that define her, scars that tell her story. Every scar has a story; some are deeper than others though.
How the scarring began.It was a hot summer night the last few weeks before school started. It was a typical high school party loud music and underage drinking. Melinda, a typical freshman girl overwhelmed by the scene, just wants to be popular and fit in. Like everyone else she drinks and drinks and drinks. She gets drunk; then comes a drunken teenage guy which makes him even more sex-crazed than usual. He wants her and he takes her to be alone then it leads to rape. She doesn’t know what to do, she’s frightened and confused. Melinda calls the cops and her social life, self-esteem, and friend numbers all goes down from that one event in life.
The effects of the scar? Day one of high school on the bus: “As they walk down the aisle, people who were my middle-school lab partners or gym buddies glare at me. I close my eyes. This is what I’ve been dreading. As we leave the last stop, I am the only person sitting alone” (3). How would you like it if no one liked you? Even your parents didn’t like to be with you? They fought all the time and they wouldn’t be together if it weren’t for you? Would you cry yourself to sleep every night? Or something more fatal such as committing suicide?
People can be affected for a long time because of sexually assaults. Recently I went on the Oprah website to look for stories. I read one about Gregg and April Milligan, a pair of siblings who were assaulted by their mother and random men for over several years. It made me sick to think about it was their mother the person who was supposed to love them. Who was supposed to be there for them no matter what? Not to sell her kids off like they are on Ebay. It took him over 20 years to finally start getting his life in check. That meant starting therapy -- he did that for around 5 years. I bet that put a big dent in his pocket. But eventually he had a happy marriage and a son. He blocked out his past and made an effort to become a new person.
Eventually everyone will have a defining moment in their life not always assault. Everyone has their own kind of scars, some more proud than others. But they make us who we are all unique in our own ways. Sometimes they aren’t always external scars, some are to the heart, and those are the ones I believe hurt the most.
