The Girl in the Mirror
I stare into the mirror, and I see someone other than myself staring back at me. She has tired eyes, ones with deep gray bags underneath and heavy eyelids covered with purple eye shadow. Her nose is peeling, dry and rough, and her lips are chapped; she licks them with her pale pink tongue. Her lips are salty from the tears that had slithered down her cheeks only moments before.
She is where I am. We are in the girl’s bathroom at school, tiresome to remain cool, tiresome not to reckon about what is going to happen. She looks at me with a pained expression, as if to say, “Help me. I need help.” But her salty lips don’t go. They stay still as well as the rest of her face, besides the nervous twitch in her left cheek that comes and goes as it pleases.
I rest my elbows on the counter beside the sink, and she does the same. We continue to stare at each other, both thinking the same thing. “Sanitation is vital,” I tell her. She nods her head in agreement. I reach for the soap, and she starts to scrub her hands violently collectively. Tears well up in her eyes, and I lash out, “Place the soap in your eyes and wash them well. Maybe then you’ll be able to see what you’re doing to yourself—to us.” She does not listen to me. Continuing to rub her hands collectively, she watches as the suds gather, and the bubbling white foam forms in between her fingers. I watch her rinse the soap underneath the faucet. The water spurts out hard, pounding on her fingers.
And then, just like that, the girl looks at me once again and sighs. It is a deep, frustrated sigh, one that I have heard so many times before. This time though, it isn’t coming from me. It is coming from her—the girl in the mirror. Turning nearly, I allocate her to takeover my body, and she leads me to the stall in the back of the bathroom. It is the smallest of the stalls, the one that not many people go in because of the cramped space and the disgusting smell. I am revolted, but the girl in the mirror is weaker than that. She is immune to smells such as urine, feces, and even vomit. In fact, vomit doesn’t have a smell anymore.
Crouching down, I—no, she leans over the toilet and stares into the contaminated water. There is used toilet paper clogging the bottom, which could easily be flushed away by the lever alongside the toilet. Laziness causes this stall to become such a disgrace. She pinches her stomach and cringes. Then again, it was laziness that brought her to where she was now. She pinches her flesh again and again, hoping that each time she squeezes it, maybe it will vanish. Maybe it will just go back to the way it used to be all persons years ago. Has it really been years since she had been thin?
She is going to do it. There is not much hesitation. Each time she finds herself in this position, sitting beside a toilet, with dried tears plastered all over her face, she gets more and more used to the thought—the thought that everyone tells her is so incorrect, is so sick, is so pathetic. And yes, she may very well be incorrect about the choices that she makes, and she force be sick, and there is no doubt that she is pathetic, but at least she isn’t me. I am not that girl. I can’t be that girl.
Raising her hand to her mouth, pointing her finger, she closes her eyes. She inches her midpoint finger down her throat, across her tongue, and to the gag reflex in the back. The burning sensation starts in the pit of her stomach, the one that she wishes to carve into perfection, and it boils up through her throat and out of her mouth. Leaning into the toilet now, her nose nearly touching the water, she hacks up the three bowls of cereal she ate for breakfast and the seven cookies she devoured for lunch. When she raises her head, she uses the back of her hand to wipe her mouth. She stands up, and looks into the toilet that she had thrown up in. Without using her vomit encrusted hands, she pushes the lever with the bottom of her shoe and watches as the toilet swallows up the ruins.
Once further than of the stall, she goes back to the mirror where she can jump back into her home and set me free to be my own person again. Suddenly, I see myself. I am there in the mirror, looking fatter than ever, uglier than ever, and I am frightened. Sniffling, I restrain the tears that are pounding in the back of my head from behind my eyes. I won’t let them out. I will leave my weaknesses and my insecurities for the girl who ruins in the mirror, even after I exit the bathroom.
By the way, it is obviously supposed to be dramatic. And no, it is not about me…
