(no subject)
She looked into the mirror and found a stranger staring back at her. Empty eyes, devoid of color, light, and emotion. Devoid of everything. She could see straight into the barren well of nothingness she had become. But she couldn't feel it. The darkness, the emptiness, had all become a part of her, deeply entrenched in what was left of her restless soul.
A strand of her once luscious brown hair fell to the floor, stringy and stained with defeat. Another followed, and another, until an array of dark locks surrounded her feet, a reminder of who she once was and who she could never ever be.
It scared her to finally see herself bare, stripped of the pretenses and facades that she carried around and held onto with a firmer grasp than she did life itself.
Do mirrors lie? Do they show us our true image, our bodies shed of materialisms and skinned to the inner core, past flesh and bone? Or do they merely give us the version of reality that we want to see? An image already conjured in the mind that can't be altered, no matter how strong the effort.
She didn't know, as she stared into the piece of glass that had the power to both make and break her. And for a fleeting moment, she almost willed her fist to punch through the mirror before her, shattering her reproduced image into refractions that could accompany the stringy strands of worn hair at her feet.
But breaking that mirror would be shattering the only view of herself she had ever known. And she wasn't ready to part with that image just yet.
So she simply brushed her remaining hair behind her ears and pasted a painfully forced smile on her face. And despite her emotionless gaze, despite her wan complexion stretching across poignant blue and green veins that laced across her skin like spiderwebs, she gazed into the mirror with her chin up and her head held high.
And, in that moment, she lost her belief in beauty.
A strand of her once luscious brown hair fell to the floor, stringy and stained with defeat. Another followed, and another, until an array of dark locks surrounded her feet, a reminder of who she once was and who she could never ever be.
It scared her to finally see herself bare, stripped of the pretenses and facades that she carried around and held onto with a firmer grasp than she did life itself.
Do mirrors lie? Do they show us our true image, our bodies shed of materialisms and skinned to the inner core, past flesh and bone? Or do they merely give us the version of reality that we want to see? An image already conjured in the mind that can't be altered, no matter how strong the effort.
She didn't know, as she stared into the piece of glass that had the power to both make and break her. And for a fleeting moment, she almost willed her fist to punch through the mirror before her, shattering her reproduced image into refractions that could accompany the stringy strands of worn hair at her feet.
But breaking that mirror would be shattering the only view of herself she had ever known. And she wasn't ready to part with that image just yet.
So she simply brushed her remaining hair behind her ears and pasted a painfully forced smile on her face. And despite her emotionless gaze, despite her wan complexion stretching across poignant blue and green veins that laced across her skin like spiderwebs, she gazed into the mirror with her chin up and her head held high.
And, in that moment, she lost her belief in beauty.