by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Creative Nonfiction contributor Jennifer Lang
"In Front of the Full-Length Mirror" was many versions before this one. I started it during my MFA as a rough guide to my body, each scar with its own story, twisting and turning through time.
Only years later did I understand how un-unique my story is after reading Dana Jennings' "Our Scars Tell the Stories of Our Lives" in The New York Times and David Owen's "Scars: A Life in Injuries" in The New Yorker.
Still, I stuck with it. Compelled to write about my marks. Despite numerous iterations, the structure stayed intact: from foot to head, nonlinear, that ended where I intended.
But between the time I started this essay in 2015 and finished it in 2020, I had a wake-up moment that altered the focus and changed the tone: the phone call from my dermatologist about the melanoma, followed by nine stitches and cancer screening. I went back into the story to add the first scar, the hardest one to live with, the one of morbidity and impermanence, adding lines like:
"Death is like looking in the mirror, seeing our deeper selves, the bare-bones truths. I am dying, my wounds evidence of this promise. They remind me of my fragility, my inability to stop nature."
After loads of rejections, I am thrilled my essay found its home in Bacopa Literary Review.
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Jennifer Lang's essays have appeared in Under the Sun, Ascent, and Consequence, among other publications. Read more of her work at Israel Writers Studio and reach out to Jennifer on her Facebook and Twitter pages.
Read Jennifer Lang's "In Front of the Full-Length Mirror" and other
compelling Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, and Prose Poetry
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021.
