A Scar that will Never Heal

Rain pelted against the café window as she sat inside, enjoying the warmth that the cup of coffee allowed her—a small black notebook laid on the coffee table filled to the brim with dollar bills. Twenty thousand, to be exact.

Money, it had made a permanent scar throughout her life. An ugly scar with smooth jagged edges that would never heal. Which made her reluctant to reach for the notebook.

Her strange reluctance towards money had all started when she was a child. Her mother had up and moved her from their small Eastern European country to New York, with nothing but a few hundred to her name. Maybe, it was then that she had realized the importance of money but had neglected to realize the importance of love and happiness. They lived in a small, impoverished neighborhood. In an ancient apartment building that seemed to shake like a leaf on a thin branch when the wind blew. And oh boy, did it blow in upstate New York. The apartment building creaked and groaned every night as she lay awake and listen for when it finally decided to topple and collapse. They shopped at the salvation army not too far from their home, but when she was young, their lack of wealth did not bother her because they were happy.

Instead, it was when they moved to the city, and her mother had gotten remarried did money dig its way into her life, clinging on with thin disgusting fingers, wrecking everything in its path. To her stepfather, money was the most important thing, and it showed through the constant fights and arguments. They either did not have enough money or did not save enough or did not spend enough…there was never a perfect way to use money.

They should have noticed it back then. The red flags. So evident in the red of his face as he yelled once more about an issue related to money. Or in the numbers on the receipts from his shopping sprees that flashed in her young eyes.

Then, suddenly, money came with the opening of their small business, but it came with a sacrifice—the sacrifice of time and family. Soon red flags turned into flags set on fire, shouting at them to turn and run away while they still had the chance.

Money came with violence. At first, with passive violence, over-flowing in double-edged words that pierced her mothers' heart so much that she had no choice but to shield it away. Then years later, on a similarly dreary day, she got the call… Money came with violence.

It was after that event that her hands started to itch, breaking out with an invisible rash at the thought of money. In her still young mind, she had equated that having no money meant being happy once more. So, she started to spend, leaving little with every paycheck. Spending turned into gambling, which in turn turned into homelessness. That was how her early twenties had been spent…sitting in dingy alleyways waiting for happiness to follow with the poverty. It never did. She had lasted only half a year before finding her way back to her now-divorced mother's house. The scar on her mother's face never did fully heal.

None of them knew what had transpired that half-year she was gone. Her mother as clueless as her brothers. It was a blacklisted topic at family dinners, one sometimes whispered by distant cousins amongst each other.

Her hands would still itch years later. The small notebook an attestation to that. It had laid on the coffee table for hours now, waiting for her to take it into her arms, but she couldn't will herself to reach for it.

She was an adult now with children of her own, her past far behind her…at least she had thought it was. But then he had showed up. Now old and sentimental with a black notebook and an apology. It was never the money that had caused the problems but him. A sentiment that took her years of therapy to finally understand.

So why? Why did her hands itch once more?

Twenty thousand…

She breathed out a long sigh.

Maybe her hands itched because it wasn't her money to take. Perhaps it was because she knew that money could not buy happiness or an apology. Perhaps it was finally time to leave her past behind and let go of her traumas.

Taking a final sip of her coffee, she collected her things before leaving the notebook behind on the table in the empty café.