Later, much later, she learned that survivors of sexual assault talk of things being “snatched away” from them—their dignity, their identity, or even, as in her case, their virginity—but Marisa always felt the opposite, as if something unwanted had forced itself into her, like shrapnel, and her entire self had to grow around it over the years that followed, warping the muscle and the skin out of shape until the scar became a misshapen part of her, something she simply had to live around.
