This was written three years ago for a school project*
In the glass lies a familiar stranger. I can see in her eyes I understand her, but on the outside she is someone I barely recognize. I’m not sure if I like her, with all her sharp angles and endless shades of color refracted. We stare at each other, she smirks at me, and I scowl at her, uncertain how to continue, afraid of what to do. We are strangers strung together by a common understanding, one we cannot ignore. Yet we don’t know how to approach one another. Polite courtesy, companionship, hatred? I don’t know with her. Within the reflection, I see every side of her, every flawed, shattered inch, the past that she pretends doesn’t exist, everything she's desperate to hide. Her reflected figure shows her as an invincible diamond, but inside she's just breakable glass.
In a moment, the lights shift, the glass changing to force me to remember her. Her past unfolds before my eyes, and I am transfixed in memoriam.
She is only four years old, bright eyed, heartbroken, and forever changed, having to grow up too fast and having to pretend too often that she was ok. On her face lingers an angelic, adorable smile, yet my heart knows its not real. It doesn’t take long for a broken child to realize if she smiled it made everyone else feel better. Her arms cling to a velvet, violet teddy bear, thin from being hugged too tight, a photograph in her hand, crumpled from being hidden all too often. the image of a boy lies in it, only an infant, an image innocent but yet so obviously not. His lips are stained with red, his skin stained with white, and her cheeks stained with tears. The pain wells within my own heart, feeling her pain as she giggles, red-eyed, becoming joy epitomized to make her family smile again. She got so good at playing pretend.
Then the image changes, and she is now seven, hair cropped in a humiliating bowl shape, ready to go to school, ready to be someone, ready to live by that smile. Her feet turn in and the butterfly pins in her hair are happily quirky, distraction from what lies within her eyes; within my heart. A pile of photos reside in her pocket, only peeking out slightly to show the truth. The young boy, an elderly man, a sickly woman, the faces peer up at her, refusing to let her forget. And the bags under her eyes tell a tale all their own. With all the pain came the long nights, nights of nightmares that scared her awake, crying. No one seems to notice that though; the hall surrounding her is covered in photos of a young, chubby cheeked boy, so little and so young. In every shot they idolized him, treated him like a miracle. I may know the difference between favoritism and the zealous gush over a baby, yet she doesn’t. She’s only a girl. At seven, the pain and nightmares weren’t what she minded most, what left a downcurve on the side of her grin. That came from wanting to be a miracle too.
Time seems to race by in seconds, and that tiny little girl is now ten. So much has changed. Her hair has grown and so has her smile; yet distinguishing its validity is impossible. Her legs are crossed, calmly, contrast to her storming eyes. Around her are students, staring at a teacher as she reads a student’s fantastic work. The girl beams, but refuses to look down at her own rejected paper in her hands. An A+ is marked on the top. Yet everyone is transfixed as the other student’s writing is written aload. There are calluses covering her fingers and pencil marks staining the long, left sleeve of her shirt. I see inside this kills her. Every so often she gives an encouraging smile to the jovial girl next to her, with no paper in her hand.My eyes widen. This friend of hers is the one whose story is being read aloud. Her taller friend is better, and it kills her inside, being close yet still not being good enough.
The picture doesn’t stay, it soon shifts. A lot changed once she is thirteen. The familial grin covers her face, yet she doesn’t seem to be smiling at herself, merely at the other person in the glass. A blonde girl is next to her, her arm around her, the two speaking without words. Yet both girls are looking at each other, and not at themselves, as if ashamed. Not long after the other girl waves goodbye and the young girl is left all alone. For once her smile truly falters, staring at what’s left; her. An insecure hand crosses over her chubby stomach, acknowledging her shapeless sides. Her arms cross self-consciously over her and she shakes her head, as if to tell herself to stop all the hate. Eyes closed, she’s smiling again, but by now I know she’s lying. I almost want to clutch her close, to hold her tight, to tell her that she’s going to be ok. That she’s not disgusting as she thinks her reflection shows. Yet, stuck outside the glass, I can do nothing. That poor young girl, she only knows how to feel pretty when she can’t see her own face in the mirror.
Darkness hits as the glass reveals the girl at fifteen. She is sitting on the floor, skinnier than before, prettier than before, but with tears falling down her face. No smile hides the pain inside. She is alone, surrounded by bleak darkness and subtle cracks throughout. The only thing alive in this godforsaken reflection is her. The photos once more are peeking out of her pocket, the past ones still there while new ones have joined their ranks; the kind face of a diminutive woman, an elderly woman paired with the previous man, a young girl with strawberry blonde hair, and the insecure girl once holding the girl up with a friendly smile. The picture is torn clean in half, with rage and anger burned into its colors. She looks at it often, sobbing more with each guilty glance. My eyes scan her, terrified and pain stricken. Eyesight, fickle and slow, finally homes in on the crook of her right elbow, with small, almost invisible cuts covering it, cuts almost hidden by her sweatshirt. My head hurts, my hands begin to bang on the glass. She hold her hands to her head, rocking ever so slightly back and forth, as if a monster is consuming her mind. I pound harder, desperate to try to help her, she’s so lost. She feels guilty, so guilty. For nothing, everything, its all her fault. Why is she such poison? No one stays. Her eyes fall on her photos and her eyes grow dark. No, no one ever stays. In the end she is always alone. The tears fall faster as her knuckles grow white, trying to use force to drive the poison out. She poisons everyone who cares; she murders them. Shadows move around her in a taunting dance. In her eyes insanity screams. the shadows dance faster and faster, spinning out of control. She's not poison, she's not a monster, she's just a girl. but like this, she can’t hear me. she never will. Now, she feels utterly hopeless, helpless, alone. I fall to my knees, tears pouring from my eyes and anger seeping from my pores. Exasperated and in more pain than bearable, the girl rips the photos out of her pocket and scatters them through the blackness, screaming for it to go away, all of it, but it helps nothing. Why does she destroy everything? She collapses into incohesive tears, curled up on the floor, taunted by her shadows, maddeningly alone.
Finally the picture fades into the image it began as, the girl giving the sarcastic smirk that I was scowling at. I still know not what to say. She may be utterly flawed, but those flaws were what made her. Every smile, every nightmare, every second of envy, every bitter heartbreak, every semblence of insanity, those terrors created her. They are her past, her future, her present. Some days she’s four, some days she’s ten, some days she’s fifteen again even though I know she’d never admit it. In that smirk I watch her pride and strength rise above her vulnerability. That smirk, that perceived confidence, shows everyone the oddly shaped diamond. Yet it's those eyes of hers, blue-green movie screens, that flicker how stupidly human she really is. In her messy hair lies a pencil, in her hand a notebook. If concentrating hard, I could see on its inside cover all the thrown photos glued haphazardly to it. They were painful to remember, but even more painful to forget. She has grown so much, through each pivotal moment, and my contradicting feelings of annoyance and admiration don’t know how to compromise. This familiar stranger could be less hyperactive, less obnoxious, less secretive sometimes. Yet as my fingers splay across the glass, I don’t know what she would be without her bravery, her pain, her beautiful imagination. her fingers twitch with the murmurs of insanity, but I know she’s handled worse. This is just another challenge to overcome. Our eyes meet defiantly and we both laugh in synchronization. She will always be challenging me in the glass, reminding me of who she is so I never am able to forget it. I glance down and my spare hand runs across my notebook, and with each painful photograph I smile. They are her world; my world. Without them, without this pain, we’d be nothing. My fingers freeze on a final photo; the cracked, crushed picture of fifteen year old me. Giving her one last, thoughtful glance, I turn from the mirror and move on with our life, reminding myself to wonder what she would do, how I would react, and make sure to live every day remembering who we are; we are beautifully broken glass.
