Person in the Mirror

CW: This piece contains themes of trauma, mental health, and the effects of such (ex. self harm, suicidal ideation). This also includes some swearing. Reader discretion is advised.

You thought you were finally rid of them, didn’t you?

You cut them out of your life— blocked their socials, deleted their contact, told everybody who truly cared about you that you were through with them. You erased any traces of them in your home. You set out to find help so they couldn’t hurt you anymore. You found therapy and loving friends, yet it wasn’t enough.

They’re still haunting you. 

You don’t notice immediately, of course— I certainly wouldn’t— but their ghost appears in subtle ways.

Their voice is in your ear when you’re making a decision; “Do you really think you look good in that?” and “Are you sure you should eat that?” and “Why would you do that?” You jump when this happens, as if expecting them to have materialized behind you to continue tormenting you. It’s only in your head, but it drowns out your other thoughts; a broken record echoing in a dead, empty room like the one you’d been in when you told them you were through with their torture. 

The scars on your skin don’t fade either— every bruise, every cut, every part that doesn’t quite move right— and you realize how far you’re going to ensure they stay hidden. You tense when people ask about them. You stumble over your words, spit out some semi-satisfactory response, and move on. Talking about them is like having them looming over your shoulder again, so close they could grab you and add to the collection of wounds across your body.

What about that one song on the radio you have to turn off? The street you can’t drive through without fixing your eyes on the road ahead and not daring to flick them to the buildings along the side? The events you have to skip because you can’t bear to be in the same room with them? The social media posts you stare at while fighting tears?

And it’s not even the worst part.

All too often, when you open your mouth, it’s their voice that comes out. It comes out when you’re in an argument with a friend and your voice raises to a shout and they look at you the way you had looked at them when they lost their temper. There’s fear in your friend’s eyes, the fear you felt as you desperately tried to salvage the situation because facing the truth was more painful. It’s nauseating, and suddenly you’re profusely apologizing in the same manner they apologized to you, enough that you pushed down your bad feelings and gave them chance after chance after chance. 

You find yourself slipping into their habits, ones you’d criticized silently because you’d learned criticizing them openly would be more trouble than it was worth. It’s as if, for a moment, they’re puppeteering you, playing out all their old tricks with you, making you question what they even though you know (but do you?) how wrong it was.

It’s like their bitterness rubbed off on you, too— comments completely out of character for you fight to break out of your head and into the world, but you bite your tongue and force them down. You can’t be honest anymore because honesty is the key to freeing those disgusting comments, so the only option is to lie and hope nobody notices. You want to scream at them to let you go, to let you live, but who would you be screaming at? The only thing betraying you is your own mind.

And suddenly, the person in the mirror isn’t you anymore. They have your eyes, your hair, your clothes, but they’re not you. It’s them.

You’re just like them.

It doesn’t matter who says otherwise. The looks in people’s eyes when you lash out, that stupid song on the radio you keep turning off (they play it an awful lot now, it seems), the energy you have to spend to resist falling into their ways— those say enough. You have to escape, but how? All the help you were getting stops working and the old, wrought-iron gates holding everything back crash open to undo all the progress you’ve made and you spiral into despair as you realize all of your efforts were futile. You can shove their photos in the furthest corner of the closest. You can avoid every song that you once thought belonged to the two of you. You can deny that you’re anything like them to every person on the planet, yet it doesn’t change anything. 

You’re just like them.

But you always were, weren’t you? You gave them too many chances to infect your mind, thinking they’d change. You defended them to too many people, so much so they gave up on you. The awful realization hits you with a wave of nausea— is this your fault? Surely not. You didn’t ask for this, and you’re not a seer. The problem wasn’t you, it was them— them, and everything they put you through because they didn’t think you had the guts to fight back. You proved them wrong, so why are they still haunting you? Why are they still standing in the corners, whispering in your ear, controlling your motions? 

What did you do wrong?

The healthy options to solve this problem dim as darker solutions take hold. You can shut up their voice with alcohol. You can inflict pain on your body when they try to puppeteer your actions, adding to the scars and bruises they’d inflicted (would it still be their fault?). If you put a bullet through your brain tomorrow, would they haunt you anymore? Would it end the torment? 

Is that a risk you even have the guts to take?

It has to stop. You have to make it stop. What are your options? Is there a better outcome? 

It doesn’t look that way.

Your reflection’s no longer in the mirror. It’s just them. You lash out and smash it, glass scattering across the furniture you laughed on, the floors you playfully chased each other on, the shelves once stocked with photos of both of you. All of that and they left you with a mind never to be truly healed, and if the universe was truly sorry for this they’d exorcize their ghost, remove it from your life. 

It wasn’t your fault.

So why does it seem like it is?