A Mirrors Body

TW: Transphobia, Indication of Suicide, Struggling Mental Health

The girl in the photo staring up at me doesn’t match the person I’ve become. 

She stares ahead with glassy blue eyes and a smile drawn onto her face. Blond hair frames her face with choppy bangs covering her forehead. I remember vividly cutting those horrible bangs in my bathroom. I stare at the girl with bangs and she stares back, a question in her dead eyes. 

She curls around me and screams, she screams for never getting to live. I hear her scream until she quiets staring at the girl in the photo with me. 

You could have grown with her. Her voice floods my ears, louder still than my own.

I nod, knowing that I was talking to myself.

Imagine what she could have looked like now. My hands lift to touch my hair, shorter now than in the picture. I let myself imagine an easier life, a life without constant screaming. A life with my mother still looking at me with pride, pride for the girl I’ve grown to be. 

It would be easy. I could grow my hair out and put on the blue skirt I left in, now tucked in the back of my closet. I could show up on her doorstep begging for another chance, telling her I was wrong.

You could see me grow. Her voice mimics the girl in the pictures. Soft and trying so hard to be feminine it almost kills her.

It almost kills her. It almost kills me.

And I know then that I could never go back.  I choose myself, leaving the girl in the picture behind.

Don’t let me go. She cries, begging to live.

“I never could, and I never will,” I say to the air, hoping she can hear me. I set the photo back into the shoebox, hiding it in the shadows of my closet. I hope she will disappear with the picture, but like always, she stays. 

Why? The question seeps into my skin, flooding my senses and hurting my head.

“Because I needed to!” I begged her to understand, I didn’t do this because I wanted her to hurt. My roommates must think I’m crazy, I was talking to myself after all. My heart hurt for the girl I once was, and ached for the person I wanted to become.  

I turned to the mirror next to my bed, something I usually avoid. I look like a ghost of what I could have become. 

Look at us, look at me.

And so I did. I looked at our hair, which was getting longer than I liked. I looked at my eyes which still held a question. A question I could never answer. My clothes hide curves I never wanted, yet she yearns to see them. My shoulders are too small, my face too round. 

My appearance hurts both her and me, we both don’t look like what we want. We stare at our reflection, at each other. I see her when I look for me, and she sees me when she looks for her.

It hurts… The words swirl around my head.

“I know,” I whisper back to her.

I look into the eyes in the mirror, seeing the confusion they hold. The confusion of somebody who could never understand.

“Listen,” I beg again to myself. “Do you have a voice that screams? An imaginary friend that's a little too masculine, that looks too much like you? 

For the first time, she is silent.

“I didn’t wake up and choose this, we choose this. I choose to leave you behind and you choose to stay, to haunt me.”

I never could have left and I never will leave. The realization breaks me.

I am no longer standing in front of the mirror, staring at another body. I am not in front of anything, for tears of blocked my vision.

“And I don't want you to!” I cry as I taste the salt from my falling tears.

Why?

“Because every day you have hope for the next! You have hope you can live again, and I don’t know how to do that.” I clear my vision and look in the mirror. “I can’t let you go…”

I want to live.

“How can you?” I ask, “How can you live when you still reside in a picture?”

I live in you.

She speaks in a whisper that sounds like a shout, her voice is poison to my mind.

I am you.

“No, you can’t be.” My voice was barely audible than a whisper.

Her voice had changed from the girl in the picture to somebody older. She sounded like how I could have sounded if I never changed. She sounded like my mother.

I see her now as a look into the mirror. I see her round face, her small shoulders, and her curves that were suddenly not hidden by clothes.

Look.

“I am.” 

What do you see?

“You.”

The voice suddenly warped, drowning out whatever she was saying next. Two voices connected in my brain, the new one sounded more like me. They had a slightly deeper voice, though not by much, and spoke without the weight of long blond hair. 

“What could you see?” The voice blew out of my own mouth but it wasn’t my words.

I looked in the mirror again, choosing not to see the present or the past, but the future. 

Strong shoulders held a head with short blond hair, carefully trimmed into place. The clothes I wore didn’t hide any curves because the curves won’t be there. I looked confident, I looked happy.

That's not you! She yelled back at me. Fighting harder than before to drown me.

But I learned to swim. 

I have been drowning since the moment I left my house. I haven’t even bothered to listen to the voice telling me to swim. Then somebody helped me swim, helped me into their house, and gave me a room. They have been helping me for so long. Now it's time to help myself.

“No, it's not. But it could be,” I smiled slightly. “So, thank you for that. You reminded me I have something to live for, something to work towards.”

Hope looked back at me in the mirror. And I know she’ll never leave me. I know I’ll be fighting with her until the day I’ll die. I know I will have hard days and easy days, but I’m okay with that. I can be. 

I finally learned to swim.