When I talk about the accident I talk about my spine.
I talk about my ear.
About the scar no one sees unless I show it.

There's a part I almost never talk about.

That night something else got damaged on the right side.
Something that doesn't show up on a spine X-ray. Something that has nothing to do with my ear.

But for a long time it was the thing that mattered least.

In the hospital I had other priorities. Hearing. Walking without stumbling so much. Coordinating a body that was barely relearning how to obey.

Next to that, this other thing weighed nothing.

It started to weigh something later.

When I went back to school and started seeing people outside my close circle, people who knew nothing about me, that's when it started to matter.

That's when something dropped that I didn't know could drop that much.

One day I looked in the mirror and something wasn't closing evenly.

It still doesn't close evenly.

It shows more when I smile.
Almost nothing when I'm serious.

My family says it's not noticeable.
I see it.

I don't know which of the two is true.
Maybe both.

It's strange, carrying something that's obvious to you and invisible to the people who love you most.
It's not that they don't believe you.
It's that they stopped seeing it years ago, from looking at you so much.

With my hearing I learned something that served me later: what shows isn't always what defines you.

With this I'm still learning that part.

I've spent ten years carrying what happened that night, and this was the only part I'd kept to myself.

Not anymore.