Mirror, Mirror

I see her way more often than I see her family. She appears in front of me excessively than I would like her to, but she comes and goes. When she was three, I saw her for the first time, her chubby cheeks and wide, lovely smile reflecting against my surface. She smiled so often when she was four, walking swiftly from one end of the room to the other. When she would return from school, I would see her unbutton her shirt and she slumped back on the bed, sighing a deep sigh, cursing the day. At six, I saw her bring home her new best friend. I saw the two of them jump on the bed, fight with the pillows until they were tired, and fell asleep. Most nights, I saw them sleep together side by side and talk about a future with ponies and a huge castle with a prince. I would silently giggle all to myself – such dreams.

At eleven, she joined a new school for I saw a new uniform on her every morning. She looked happier, I could tell it so well. For the first few weeks, she was all smiles and happiness. But when months passed by, she stayed in her room more than before. She started making excuses to stay home, and I knew they were petty excuses, for I saw her jumping out of the bed as soon as her mother left for work. Such a liar, I used to think.

At thirteen, however, I saw the tears on her cheeks for the first time. She was looking straight at me, the ugly fat drops running down her cheeks. I wanted to wipe them off but I could not. She looked straight at me for a brief minute, and then wiped away the tears with the back of her palm. Then she turned around and scooped at the corner of her bed. I wondered what had made her upset, for the girl I had always seen – she used to find a way to be happy.

A week after her fourteenth birthday, when everybody at home was asleep, she came up to her room and sat at the edge of the bed, her eyes directly staring at me. By this time, she had started talking to me a lot. She would stand in front of me and babble on about her day, not that I did not like it. I did like listening to her and her joys and miseries. But that night was different. And I specifically remember it because she started crying again, the tears flowing out as if without a stop. She did not even bother to wipe them. The tears, the sadness in her eyes pained me. She then stood up and walked forward, her face weirdly closer. She pulled the skin at the corner of her eyes, and below her lips. Her jaw trembled as she studied her own face on the reflection, the tears not stopping. Her lips quivered as she uttered the words, “Why are you so ugly?”

The darkness under her eyes grew more and more prominent as she turned sixteen. I would often see her up at night, sometimes until four in the morning. She wouldn’t sleep or do any work. She would just be on her bed, eyes blinking open, thinking what only she knew. Some nights, I wished I could understand her mind. Some days, I wished I could understand why she started wearing black, full-sleeved tees so much, why she would throw the food out of the window most nights. Often she would cry. Often, I saw her applying layers and layers of make up to hide the blemishes on her skin. She looked pretty with red lips and dark, lined eyes though. But sometimes, I could hardly recognize her.

At seventeen, I saw the scars that caked the entirety of her left arm. It disgusted me to my core, although I had none, and I deeply wished I could take the blade away somehow when she craved the scars in front of me. I heard and saw her yelp in pain and the tears roll down her face. She looked at herself in my reflection, did not look away. As the blood oozed out of the wound, her eyes hazed. 'Why are you so ugly?'

She fainted soon after. For the weeks that followed, I did not see her. When she came back, she looked terrible than what she looked before.

The chubby girl that I once knew was there no more. Instead, there was a thin, extremely thin and fragile girl that I could not recognize anymore. Her hollow eyes often scared me at nights when she would stare at me for too long. I could see her bones; she was nothing but bones. She hardly ate and I saw her secretly stash away the food down the window. Again and again. I wish someone had noticed her actions then. I wish someone had stayed with her then.

She didn’t leave home and when she was nineteen, her room was still hers and the bed still smelled of her. She was taller but still thin. One day, a fine day in summer, she came home with a boy. He was a pretty one; let me tell. Charismatic with tiny dimples at the corner of his mouth. Deep brown eyes that resembled melted chocolate. He came in again and again, and most days, he kissed her. On the lips. On the shoulders. On the breasts. Everywhere. I wish I could somehow unseen those moments in life and wish I hadn’t been the witness of all those. But some things never leave their trace. Just like him.

One day, he just stopped coming. It turned into weeks and then months, and I never saw him again. When she spent most of her days cooped up at a corner of her room, mostly naked and in vain, I assumed he had left her and disappeared. The tears flowed out most nights, and I witnessed them all.

Why did you have to be so ugly?

Her weight decreased even more and by the time she was twenty, she looked like a walking skeleton. Her mother looked scared and worried whenever she came to see her daughter. She slept like a bear, although her size was nothing like them. I was worried, of course. And often, I would remember the little girl that I saw first. Three years young. Happy and jolly, without a care in the world. The chubby, healthy girl who did not care if anyone hated her for her size or her face. The same girl who had very little left of her.

It was as if a sort of darkness had haloed around the young soul, maddening her with crazy thoughts. One day, when she was twenty-two, at one after mid night she suddenly woke up. Then walked up to me and looked closely at herself. She looked so scary, so troubled and she had cried that night. Her eyes was devoid of any shine. Her face was hardly there. I could see the bones of her jaw, sharp at the edges. She touched her face, the nose and the lips. Then the forehead and the chin. Then she shrieked like a madman.

“No one loves me! Why cannot anyone just love me for once?” She shrieked and broke into tears. Then on the floor, she shivered as she cried until she fell asleep. If I could feel and react, I would have cried for hours after that.

Why are you so ugly?

At twenty-four, the hour of the blade returned. At nights when her parents were asleep, I would see her take the blade out of the cupboard where she kept it hidden. Then she would play it casually along her skin, as if it was nothing but a feather. Slowly, she would push it down on what was left of her skin. A low scream would come out of her mouth, then the blood would appear. She would bite down her lip to prevent her screams but the pain in her face was too hard to see. And I only wished someone had put a cover over me so I was spared of these sights. Of these horrific sights, I had to see.

At twenty-five, she finally left her room and never came back. The pain and suffering of a broken heart was too hard for her to heal. At the end, she could not take it anymore. I saw her last, the night she took out the blade for one last time. If I could have moved, I would have taken it away and slapped her for even thinking such a thought. But I had seen her struggle living the life. I had seen her struggle passing each day with a tiny kindle of hope in her barely beating heart. But at the end, there was no hope that she could see. There was no hope for her.

I saw the way the light left her eyes as she fell down on the floor of her room. The blood spilled out of her wrists like a river while the black of her eyes closed forever. I wanted to scream and cry and hold her up in place, hold that wound to stop the blood somehow. I wanted to tear out of my permanency and save her. Someway. Anyway. For I had seen her grow into this woman who suffered in the dark all alone, who cried at nights because she wasn’t pretty enough to be loved. I had seen her struggle at high school when she felt like she was too ugly, too fat for the world. I had seen her take her life, fall until she was there no more.

And I stand at the corner of her room even now. They took away her body but they left her room the way it was. The sheets are intact and neatly folded. The curtains are always drawn and there was no light in the room. I remain in the midst of the darkness, wondering if this was how she felt like in her initial days. I wonder if I had shown her a different picture of herself, she would have been alive. If only it was possible. To show a mirror of lies. But she is gone now, probably some place where she feels pretty and happy. And here I stand, alone and lonely at a corner, waiting for someone to move me out of the room. Waiting for my next prey.