Cracked: A Tale of Two Worlds.

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own...

I stood in front of the mirror brushing my hair and putting my make-up on. I looked like my usual self, pale, freckled, with long dark brown hair that never went where I wanted it to go. I didn't like my usual self very much, I wanted to be beautiful like other women and not like the 'plain Jane,' I always saw every day in that ugly mirror.

I had been brushing my hair for over an hour, and I suddenly became impatient and angry. Swearing at the mirror, I threw the brush down and cried.

As usual, my hair wasn't going to style in the way that I wanted it. I already hated my looks, but today, I hated them more.

I dared to stare at my face in the mirror. My eyes were red from crying and my face looked paler than ever. Suddenly the image in the mirror distorted and a crack line formed down the middle of it. I hadn't thrown anything at the mirror, so I was sure it wasn't me who had broken it. I watched, feeling confused as another crack formed in a diagonal position over the middle crack. The mirror darkened, then lightened again, showing another image.

The image wasn't me.

The image was of a young girl with dark hair, probably around nine years old. She was having an argument with her mum and screaming. Her eyes were hollow, and her face was pale and distorted. Her mum was screaming back at her, which only made her scream louder.

The screams didn't seem normal for a little girl. It sounded as if there were multiple young girls screaming inside her.

When the screaming stopped, the little girl fell to the floor sobbing clutching her teddy bear.

Then she looked at me, and I screamed.

When I stopped screaming, I looked around myself. I didn't recognize my home and I was certain that I hadn't left my house.

I had been in my bathroom which was painted peach, with matching units that had a variety of different plants on them, an electric shower, and a large bath.

The room I now stood in was very dark with old wooden floors and no furniture other than a bed in the corner.

A young figure of a girl kept disappearing and reappearing sobbing just like the one I had seen in the mirror. I couldn't see the teddy bear as she had her back to me. She stayed for about a minute before fading into a shadow, then reappearing again.

I heard footsteps in the room, and I heard the sound of a woman's voice calling my name.

"Xanthe! Xanthe! XANTHE!" The voice said twice, then shouted my name loudly the third time.

"XANTHE, IF YOU DON'T CLEAN THIS ROOM NOW, YOU'LL GET NO TEA!" The woman finally shouted in a horrible, loud voice which scared me.

The little girl obviously had the same name as me, though I didn't know anyone else who had the same name.

The room that I was standing in suddenly flooded in daylight, except this time, it changed again.

It was almost as if time had suddenly changed.

This time, I was sitting on a floral couch in a sun-filled lounge. The little girl was eating toast and watching television.

"XANTHE! You are in for it if you don't get ready for school!" The woman shouted again.

Xanthe erupted in sobs.

She picked up her backpack and threw it across the room then something unusual happened.

She screamed wildly, and her face split in two. One was an adult face that looked just like me, and the other was a child who looked nothing like me as far as I could remember.

My mum passed away in the summer of 2020, so I was sure that this wasn't my mother. However; I do remember with great sadness that I didn't have the best relationship with her. She was always screaming and shouting at me over the least little thing, and I remember the many painful fights that I had with her.

The scene that was unfolding before me, reminded me of my painful relationship with my mum. It was like De-Ja-Vu all over again.

After fighting and cursing with each other for a long length of time, Xanthe and the woman who I think was her mum, left for school. I, on the other hand, was transported to another time, yet again.

This time I was sat on a field with nobody. There was a stream flowing in front of me, and a few large conifer trees around me. The field was misty but the sky was blue, and there were birds singing in the trees. I recognized this field; it was a field in Acorn Valley where I had been taken on a day trip for my 16th birthday by my mum just before we had lost her. We hadn't had a very good day; we had argued and physically fought over my boyfriend that day. My mum did not like my boyfriend, she had judged him because he was a biker, and since that day we had never spoken again.

A tear fell from my eye, as I remembered all the fights I had with my mum when she was alive. I had never said goodbye to her when she died because I was too angry with her for her treatment of me.

We never got to talk about it anymore

A stray tear fell into the pond, and at that moment I was transported back to the room where I had originally stood. The little girl sat back on her bed crying, though this time, she turned around. It took every breath I had to not scream when I saw her hollow eyes, and she suddenly cried,

"Help me!"

I was then transported back to my own bathroom.

I stared at the mirror in the bathroom, and it was all intact.

I realized that the little girl was not me as I am today, but a past version of my young self.

I was living in two worlds.

One was the adult in the present world, happy and sad. The other was the little girl that I used to be, hollow and still in pain from unresolved issues.

Although I am not that little girl in the mirror with the same name as me, I now know that unless I resolve my grief; the mirror will always see me as that little girl that I no longer am, and it does...

Every time I look into that mirror, I am transported to a past reality that is not me in the present, and the little girl is always there.