There was a certain face today that did not return my usual gaze into the mirror. She was a faded, sore woman; one who saw the world through dull eyes and assessed her surroundings amongst a static hiss of white noise. She followed my gaze only vaguely, her frame worn thin as pale, sallow skin clung loosely to the bone. Behind a frayed curtain of an unkempt mane, perhaps there was the smallest trace of a youthful beauty hidden behind her decrepit, hardened shell, a trace that exposed itself discreetly and seldom. I told myself in vain that I did not know this worn woman, that the dull gaze she stared with under no circumstances belonged to my own face. Surely, I thought in a mindset detached, This woman’s misery is mere stranger to my own.

Stranger. The word comforted me, knowing that this wretched, coarse woman, was nothing to me but a stranger, staring coldly from the mirror so grimly into my eyes.