Thriving.

"I've never noticed them before," he said, as if naming them would make them more real. He touched my arm, the faint pink-purple lines, with one guitar-string-calloused finger.

"They're not very obvious," I said. We were sitting on the front steps together, him waiting for his new girl, me waiting for Milla. I was looking for pictures of Giselle Bundchen for him in last September's Vogue.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure." I folded down a corner of a page of a perfume ad, knowing I'd want it later to put into my poetry/collage book.

"Did it hurt when you did it?"

I sighed a little. "Not when I did it."

"Did it feel good?"

"Not really."

There was a long pause. I skipped the Luis Vuitton ad with Jennifer Lopez in it. I didn't want to look at him. We had never talked about it before; about what happened a little over a year ago. We just don't talk about those things. He wrote a song about it and left it on my pillow ( when you left heaven/did the angels cry/ 'cause you were gone?/ 'cause when I thought you were/ I did); I thanked him; we moved on.

We never talked about the locked bathroom doors, the late-night phone calls, the never-ending tears. We never talked about the sharp edge of the knife-- rosebush scratches were never so straight and precise-- or the police coming or the sedatives. We never talked about the night he wouldn't leave me-- the night he saved my life.

It struck me suddenly, how strange things are for me. What a different girl I am now, and yet so much the same. My self-destructiveness has slowly dissolved, and when it returns, the bouts are shorter and shorter. I laugh more-- and now I mean it. I believe in myself. I may not be the prettiest or the best or the thinnest or the smartest, but if I think I am, who can tell me differently? And if they try, why should I listen?

I received the DVD from The Importance of Being Earnest. I curled up on the couch, trembling so much the muscles in my back started to cramp. I was scared to watch myself, but I knew I had to.

The proposal scene was glorious. The tea scene was perfect . The third act made me squeal with delight. As I stared at my photo on the main menu-- cropped and placed between Ben looking puzzled and Rachel looking incredulous-- I felt a strange sort of marvel. That girl there... the girl with her arms folded, skeptical eyebrows raised, mouth pursed in a Fairfax moment of superiority... that girl is me. That girl writes. That girl acts. That girl has talent. That girl loves. That girl is loved. That girl is me. I can do this. I can be... everything I ever wanted to be and more on top of it.

Because I know how precious my life is. I know that I have something that needs to be accomplished here. My plans may be skewed and messy, my perception of the future may be murky, but I know that it is okay... because I am still alive. It hurts my heart to know that I would have missed out on this moment, this confidence, if I had given up.

"Does it bug you?" My brother thought twice, clarified his question. "The scars, I mean."

"No," I said, and I looked up and smiled at him. "No, they don't. 'Cause I'm still alive to have them."

He grinned his lopsided grin.

"Found that chick yet?"

"You're just a dirty old man," I said, and he grinned again.

"You love me."

"Damn straight," I said, and I shoved the magazine at him.