Hello Mirror

Hello Mirror.

It’s been a while. I’ve been avoiding you again. Anything that could serve as you, whatsoever: the reflection in the windows of the businesses downtown, the ripples that would distort my face in the nearby lake if I gave it the chance, the aluminum while my sister excitedly bakes her favorite winter desserts, the spoon at dinner that I used to find funny when I appeared upside down, the cutest snow globes that are lined up perfectly in tourist shops I got dragged into -- I can go on.

Not proudly, but I can go on. I won’t, but there’s a million more suffocating me, and yet I can’t find the will to resent them. They’re part of me as much as my stomach is, as much as the blood in my veins, the brown in my eyes.

Goodness! Every single day has felt exactly the same, so tell me, how is it possible that when I look back on the lifetime I’ve lived everything has changed? I used to be so naive, so carefree, so innocent, and I don’t know what happened to any of it. I don’t know in what part of it I grew up, and I ended up looking after myself. Since when was I trusted to be unsupervised?

I used to be the little girl that my parents called a babysitter for when they went for a night out, and the little girl who, there for a while, my mother couldn’t part ways with at all when I was newly born. In my humble opinion, if it amounts to anything, the longer I live the more I’m convinced that I shouldn’t be allowed to be alone with myself, with my thoughts, with the inner-demons that act like they have every intention to console me, while they simultaneously eat up the angelic-leftovers hardly remaining. I get smaller every year, more frail than I used to be. I’m two feet tall and still shrinking, and it sucks. It sucks so much.

When did everything go wrong? How is it not pinpoint-able? How could it not make sense?

“This is me,” I say to myself, and I say to you. I try to smile about it to fool myself, to take pride in it, but it doesn’t happen as fast as I wish it to.

I’m a woman now. A young, pained, unpowerful woman that’s working to anchor my feet to the ground with far too many failures to ignore, too many things that I can’t do right. I don’t hold the specialties other people do, I’m lower than most, and my self-esteem, non-existent, engraves into the side of my forehead that I have no right to the ingredient that gives me dignity to my existence. I’m full-on aware of what I was doing thirty seconds ago, and how shameful of a life I live. I can’t shake what’s become a habit before I realized it was creeping up on me.

I check the scale every five minutes, having a total breakdown over the gain of an ounce. I’ve learned to take showers without looking down, a hatred boiling in me if I accidentally give in and hand myself a reminder that I’m not up and going with the standards and the trends. I shave away the body hair across my legs, my arms, my armpits because social media told me to, though it makes me uncomfortable and even shyer in my own skin, and I dream for rhinoplasty because I’ve been told that my nose isn’t “Caucasian” enough, and that it’s too wide to be attractive. I struggle to get out of bed in the morning, unable to brush my hair for days, and then I can’t stand to be the one in my body even more. I don’t have the energy to leave the house, I feel guilty over what I’m sure is nothing but it sticks anyway, and I jump and circle around the judgement of people that don’t matter -- that shouldn’t matter, but that apparently do if they don’t go away.

I don’t understand what I’ve become. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want to be.

“And I’ve missed you,” you reply in a mumble. I go fuzzy all over within my bones, unsure if I could’ve heard you right. It’s the brightest light I’ve felt, heard and seen in what feels like decades. I've been so deprived, and I needed it more than I’d like to admit, but you know it, because you’re another me staring back as I gaze upon you. Part of me is a lot nicer and softer on herself than I thought, and that part of me is worth listening to more often than I do. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but it’s emerging now and I have to grasp it tightly before I let myself watch it slip away.

“Since you’ve been gone, your body fought off sickness for you, so it didn’t completely take over. It adapted for you when you were dehydrated so you could retain water and it held energy when you were tired. It lets you know what you need so that you could be the very best version of yourself and thrive in your surroundings. Your brain is amazingly yours and only yours, and nobody can hold the exact capabilities that you do. You put a spin on this earth that nobody can contribute to exactly like you. You’re blessed with being able to taste, to touch, to smell, to hear, to see, to love and to be passionate about your interests. You get stronger and braver everyday and you heal when you break down and bleed. You have delightful things to look back on, to feel joy from the past in the present, and it protects you when need be. It works so hard for you, don’t you understand that, Yenn? Live life for yourself, and don’t worry about what other people think. Call yourself beautiful once and mean it. It’s overdue, don’t you think?”

I nod a little, hesitantly. It feels funny since it’s been so long, but I’m just barely convinced enough to take it to heart. It makes sense to live the life that makes me happy, and that I’m satisfied living in, even if it is easier said than done. A smile, a genuine one this time, is one step closer to that. It’s a promise to live the real me every single day, confidently and without doubt. As factual as it is more often than not, the mind fed by unrealistic standards is my biggest enemy, it is possible to battle it and to win -- to come out loving myself to the highest extent, to shine within the body I’ve been gifted to live in.

There's no reason to be afraid of me, of you. You're right about that.

“You’re beautiful,” I pause briefly. “I’m beautiful.”