Tiffany stands before herself naked in the mirror surveying her body. This is her ritual, this is what she does everyday. To make sure that none of her scars have opened during the night, no sores, no bleeding. She shows us her most vulnerable side as she shares how she got the scars that she wears over most of her body. Remembering the woman that she was and the stranger that she has become. Domestic violence is a serious offense in society and sometimes people never see it coming. Tiffany never thought that she would open her door to a bottle of gasoline. Never thought that this man would smile as she burned. But she fought through and she survived. Sometimes life’s greatest lessons are the ones that hurt the most to learn. Sometimes we have to be reminded of these lessons on a daily basis, by simply looking in the mirror. As we see in Tiffany the scars that she lives with are no match to her burning will to live, succeed, and tell her story of overcoming the most painful experience in her life to then be transformed.
DI/ Female- Burning Scars
- (Tiffany stands naked in front of a mirror. She examines her body from head to toe. What she sees makes her feel shame and discomfort once she sees the audience looking at her. She covers herself.) This is how I start my day, trying to find the comedy or the punch line in what I'm looking at in the mirror. I wake up and for the first twenty to thirty minutes of my morning I examine myself from head to toe, from the top of my head, the bottoms of my feet, and everywhere in between. That is what the doctor told me would be a part of my life until the day that I died, checking my body. He told me to look for cracks in the skin, extreme dry patches, sores that look like they may be infected, brakes in the skin, any inflamed, mucus or blood draining from old stores, and any unexplained bruising. That is the life of a burn survivor. My life. Half an hour I spend looking in the mirror. Luckily I don't have to look on my back it is the one part of my body that I did not get burned on. After I look at myself in the mirror I take a very lukewarm, low-pressure shower. I can no longer use a sponge or a towel because they are much too hard on my skin. I used to take baths once a week. It was like a treat for me, happy Friday. I can't do that anymore either because I'm not allowed to be submerged in water any longer. So many things of changed in my life and I never even knew that being burned could affect these things. My burns look much better now than they did when it first happened.