Mirrors

(In the essay Daryl's my ex and Maddie's the girl he gives me up for. Sorry pals. The names just seemed to fit.)

I was once full of life. Years ago, I had what the girls in my school were fighting to get - love. The confidence that radiated from me brightened the lives of the people around me, and for my confidence I was well-liked and admired.

Unknown to everyone including me, my confidence came not from within myself. Daryl, with his sweet words and the way he gazed into my eyes with love, always made me feel like the most beautiful girl alive. He never took notice of my imperfect complexion, or the fact that i was slightly plump - when I talked to him about it, he simply said it made me look cuter - and as he never mentioned these flaws to me, I had never noticed them, either. In his eyes, my beauty was incomparable to everyone else's, and it slowly became so in my own eyes too. My confidence never came from within myself; instead, it was fuelled by Daryl's love for me.

The danger of finding security in someone other than yourself is that when he disappears, you lose it. The day Daryl took an interest to Madeleine was the day I fell from grace. I was the most beautiful girl to him, was I not? Seeing pictures on the Internet of the both of them together pierced my soul like a dagger in my heart. I studied her carefully - her waist-length hair; her big, chestnut-brown eyes; her angular features; her rose-tinted lips - and began to feel sick with realisation. A tear trickling down my cheek, I stared at myself in my pink, full-length mirror. For the first time I saw what I really looked like. My eyes were too small, made even smaller from the crying. Freckles were appearing on my tanned skin, and I was never plump - I was fat. My tears had mysteriously stopped, and I stood in front of the mirror in shock. This could not be me. Rage engulfed my soul as I smashed the mirror and saw myself break apart in the shattered glass - a reflection of how I felt inside. The pink mirror was too pretty for such an ugly girl like me.

In school, I was too afraid to show my face, finding comfort in hiding behind books or covering my eyes with my long fringe. Concerned friends came up to me and asked what had happened, but I was too humiliated to look at their pretty faces and dared not meet their gaze. I became uncomfortable when people looked at me. When someone happened to laugh as I walked past, I would hang my head lower and cry inside, assuming it was me she was laughing at. Every time I came across a mirror or a reflective surface, I would be unable to resist the temptation to glance at my reflection, in an attempt to find an occasion where I looked as beautiful as I - or Daryl - thought I was, and convince my shattered heart that i did not look that bad. Instead, I would always only see the same ugly girl staring back at me, and I would detest myself all over again. No longer did I wear the pretty tank tops, skirts and dresses I used to love to put on - I was far too hideous-looking for those.

Daryl's sweet words continued to haunt me, and every time I caught sight of myself in the mirror, the words would whisper themselves to me from the back of my mind, laughingly, sneeringly, until the little voice became a deafening laughter ringing in my ears, engulfing me, as I would crouch down with my hands on my ears, trying to block out the mocking words that screamed from within me.

Thank God for my friends who never gave up on me. With their constant reassurance and love, I grew in confidence again, slowly. My friends showed me that true beauty came from within. When I was full of confidence and life, I was beautiful even though I did not look as good as some of my classmates, and my friends would feel beautiful around me, too. When my confidence was torn apart, so was my beauty. In the past, everyone saw the life and spirit inside me. People were blinded by my grace and confidence; what I actually looked like on the outside was almost invisible to them. When I had lost my confidence, people only saw a cold, empty shell behind lifeless eyes. Like a mirror, how I felt inside reflected what I looked like on the outside, and what people saw when they looked at me. Slowly, I regained strength again. Very slowly, I could feel the radiance in me begin to shine again.

Now, it seems like fate that I met you. The first time I saw you, you were lying on the cold, hard concrete floor of the deserted corridor in the school, a stream of tears flowing from your red eyes to form a puddle of sorrow on the ground. I could tell that those eyes were full of life before. Your weak, anguished expression almost concealed the happiness you had felt just moments ago. Your cries struck a chord in my heart, a beautiful song of pain. I could tell you had given up on hope, that you felt like as if you had just been pulled out of your fantasy and were forced to face reality. I saw the lifelessness in your eyes, but underneath that mask of death I caught sight of a faint, muffled cry for help, for hope, for desperation to go back to the life you once lived. I know, because I have been down that road before. In you I see a reflection of myself, like as if I were looking through a mirror that had travelled through time. I will not let you suffer everything I went through. I promise to help you regain your confidence, to shine with beauty once more, just like how my friends helped me, because your life mirrors my own.