When I was young, I would stand in front of my bathroom mirror and whisper, as most little girls do, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the prettiest of them all?"
And I would wait. I would wait for upwards of five minutes, feeling as though it was forever, and my mirror would never answer. It would reflect me, yes, but that was not enough. I was waiting for the magic, for the spoken conformation. And never once did my mirror look at me and respond, "You, my dear."
After those five minutes, I would frown a bit, but I would not cry. I had cried before, yes, but months of asking my mirror the same question and receiving the same reply had dissolved the tears before they even touched my pale skin.
Instead, I would lean just a tiny bit closer to the mirror, and I would mumble, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the bestest of them all?"
Still, I would receive no reply. Often, I'd leave the room downcast. My parents would notice but not speak a word, for they had long given up asking. My attention span being what it was, I would quickly find something else to do and perk up, but every night, like clockwork, I would return to my beloved mirror and whisper the same words.
And I would always, always receive the same answer.
* * *
As I grew older, my questions changed. The year I turned eleven, I found myself constantly standing before that selfsame mirror, pushing stubborn strands of hair behind my ears. I would frown in disgust at my own clothing, scrambling to fix it. I hadn't quite reached the stage of dissecting every part of my body, tirelessly looking for imperfections, but that was soon to come.
I stopped asking the mirror my questions in fairy tale ways. Instead, I tried to be more direct. I would grip the edges and furiously growl, "Why can't my hair just stay put?"
As always, it would not answer. It would only show me myself, my stupid hair, my disheveled clothing. I would frown, as I had done with every question asked, and I would wait. I would wait for the miracle to finally answer, for it to give me perfectly sound advice and help me fix myself up right, just as things happen in fairy tales.
My life was no fairy tale. My mirror did not answer.
Out of frustration, I would often strike the counter, and, in a stage-whisper, demand, "Why won't you answer me?" And then, "Why can't I look like them?"
By then, all I would see was the pain in my own eyes. I would stare for a few moments, desperate for answers, inwardly crying, before leaving, hurt as always. I never understood why I kept coming back, night after night, with the same questions, but I never failed to. Perhaps I did not hurt myself outwardly, but inwardly, destroying myself seemed to be my only mission.
Very rarely did I show this hurt outside of my lonely bathroom. Only once did someone walk in on me, and I burst into tears at the sight. My little brother, too young to see me the way I was, had strolled into my torture room, yelling my name. He'd stopped in the doorway, stared, and turned around just as fast, no words spoken.
The next day, I found "you're beautiful" scrawled messily across my mirror.
It only enraged me. I burst into tears again, slamming my fist into the mirror. Somehow, it did not break - perhaps there was not enough force behind my eleven-year-old blows. I crumbled to the floor, allowing tears to soak into my jeans. No, I could not bear to believe the words on my not-so-magic mirror, no matter who had written them.
I was not beautiful. I would never be.
Still enraged, I erased the words with one mighty swipe of a cloth.
"There," I whispered, "beautiful no more."
* * *
At seventeen, I was no better off than at five and eleven. I still lived in the same house I'd spent my entire life in, with the same mirror hanging in the same bathroom. I spent almost every free moment in that room, staring at myself in the mirror. Yes, it was a waste of life. I could be doing so much more. But I'd become obsessed.
My nose was too big, my eyes too wide. I needed a tan - my legs were far too pale for the upcoming spring vacation. My hair was unruly, it was too straight when I wanted it curly, too curly when I wanted it straight. I hated it, I hated it all -
I hated myself.
My questions had barely changed since I was eleven, however I'd stopped asking them aloud. I'd write them down with a bright red marker, just as they came to me. After a year of doing this, my mirror had become so crowded with hateful questions and words that I could barely see my own face. In a way, I was glad to not see my monstrous face. In another, I could only think of what I'd written.
Why am I so ugly? What had I done to deserve this? And others. Ugly bitch. Who would ever love a girl like me?
I could barely think through my own terrible thoughts. I was close to the breaking point, and I'd brought myself there. There was hardly any saviour for me, nothing to bring me back from the edge.
Or so I thought.
But that was before. Before I went to sleep one night, crying at my mirror once more, before my little brother snuck into my room. He was hardly little at that point, though I had always regarded him as younger, just a baby. I could hardly imagine the thoughts through his own head, the desperation he felt towards my own condition. I had thought I'd kept it all hidden over the years, that he'd never noticed.
The next day, I entered the bathroom, ready to take another shot at myself. I was ready for the insults, the tears that would invariably come. What met me was shocking.
My words had been erased. All of them.
My blood red marker lay in the garbage, ink bleeding into the trash bag.
I actually expected my mirror shattered, considering the rest. But no.
In replace of my red marker, there was bright green, smiling up at me from the counter. I glared at it, then raised my eyes to the mirror itself.
"You're beautiful," it told me, and I flashed back to the eleven-year-old me, crying on the floor out of fear. Fear for myself, fear that I'd corrupted my brother's innocence, fear of the world around me. I resisted the urge to smash my fist into the mirror again - doing so would likely break it. Seventeen-year-old me had far more force than eleven-year-old me.
But it didn't just stop there. No, right underneath "You're beautiful," more words were scripted. I smiled a bit, comparing it to the messy scrawl in my memory. This script was elegant. Perhaps too elegant for a thirteen-year-old boy, and yet it was his.
"You are not ugly. You don't deserve to beat yourself up, and you are certainly not an ugly bitch."
I grinned a bit at the last part. He was supposed to be the innocent one. Maybe I'd corrupted him after all (and suddenly I stopped smiling).
It was not the first lines that changed my ways, however. There was more than that. I might've simply burst into tears (again) at what he'd written, if not for the last line. My heart nearly stopped at it, and I actually began to smile.
"I love you, and don't you ever forget that."
The smile still stuck on my face, I raised my left hand to my mirror, gently laying it next to the words.
"Never," I whispered.
"Never."
