Rallume Ta Lumière –Relight Your Light

They say time heals all wounds, but no one talks about the scars you give yourself trying to survive the people who hurt you. Spending years learning to smile through the silence, to love only the parts of yourself you thought others could tolerate. But healing, you were learning, didn’t always come in solitude. Sometimes, it arrived in the shape of an apology you never asked for—from the last person you’d ever expect.

Ava always thought the worst thing about high school was how it followed you like a bad perfume, even years later. She was 27 now—college behind her, a decent job in digital marketing, a cozy apartment with sun-warmed windows, and an aloe plant she managed not to kill. On paper, everything looked okay. But in the quiet moments—when she was brushing her teeth or microwaving dinner at 11:30 p.m.—she still heard that voice. Not her own, but hers.

"Try not to break the mirror, Ava," Brittany Marks had said once, back in junior high, loud enough for the whole locker row to hear. "It’s already suffering."

And Ava had laughed. Not because it was funny, but because that’s what you do when you’re trying not to cry.

Twelve years had passed. Ava had unlearned the things that girl made her believe. Mostly.

She hadn’t expected to see Brittany again. People like her—people who floated through high school on cheer squad wings and varsity jackets—weren’t supposed to end up in the same dusty bookstore-turned-café on a Wednesday afternoon. Yet, there she was, sitting by the window, sipping tea out of a chipped ceramic mug and staring into space like she was waiting for the universe to blink back. Ava almost turned around. Almost pretended she didn’t see her. Almost let the past stay where it belonged.

Maybe it was how tired Brittany looked, like she’d forgotten how to hold her shine. Or maybe Ava was just tired of running from ghosts. She walked over and said the last thing she ever imagined herself saying.

“Hey. Brittany?”

The blonde looked up, eyes narrowed slightly like she was still catching up to reality. Then her expression flickered—recognition, guilt, something like shame.

“Ava? Wow. Uh. Hi.” A pause. They stared at each other, two old versions of themselves flickering behind their eyes.

Ava gestured to the chair across from her. “This seat taken?”

Brittany blinked. “No. Yeah. I mean, it’s free. Yeah.”

So Ava sat.

They talked. First in awkward pleasantries—“What are you up to these days?” and “Still in town?” But then something shifted. Brittany admitted she was working part-time at a yoga studio, trying to figure out what came next after a messy breakup and a burnt-out teaching credential. Ava, in turn, confessed she was in a weird place too—struggling with burnout, dating disasters, and a gnawing sense of not being enough, no matter how hard she tried.

The conversation stretched. The tea went cold. They started meeting up—once, then again, then weekly. It was weird at first. Like making peace with a hurricane. However, Brittany had changed. Or maybe Ava had. Probably both.

“I was a nightmare in high school,” Brittany said one evening over chai and apple scones.

Ava tilted her head. “You weren’t exactly a ray of sunshine.”

“I was miserable,” Brittany admitted. “I hated myself. But it was easier to make someone else feel small than admit I felt invisible.”

Ava studied her. The words didn’t erase the damage, but they opened something. A door she didn’t know had stayed shut.

“I spent so many years trying to be… palatable,” Ava said. “Loving myself only when someone else loved me first.”

Brittany nodded, silent.

That night, Ava went home and looked at herself in the mirror. Not to criticize. Just to see. The slope of her nose. The curve of her collarbone. The tiny scar on her chin from learning to ride a bike.

She whispered, “You’re okay.”

It wasn’t love. Not yet. But it was something.

Over the next few months, their friendship grew. There was no “makeover montage” or dramatic epiphanies—just small moments that stitched themselves into change. Brittany invited Ava to a beginner yoga class she was teaching, and to her surprise, Ava liked it. Not because she was flexible or graceful (she wasn’t), but because it was the first time she’d moved her body not to punish it, but to thank it.

One morning after class, Brittany said something that stuck with her.

“You know what self-love is?” she said, wiping down her mat. “It’s showing up for yourself. Not because someone else is watching. Not to prove anything. Just because you’re worth it.”

It landed in Ava’s chest like a pebble dropped into a pond. Ripples.

She started writing again—poems, mostly, and strange half-finished stories. She cooked dinner even when no one else would eat it. She went to therapy. She deleted the dating apps and bought herself flowers. It felt as though she had been given sight after being blind for so long.

Not because she was giving up on love, but because she was starting to understand that loving herself wasn’t a consolation prize. It was the prize.

One evening, Brittany showed up on Ava’s doorstep with red-rimmed eyes and mascara streaks on her cheeks.

“He told me I’m too much,” she said, voice cracking. “Too intense. Too emotional.”

Ava pulled her into a hug. Held her until her breathing evened out.

“You’re not too much,” she said gently. “Maybe he was just not enough.”

Brittany laughed, watery and a little broken. “You’re getting wise on me.”

Ava grinned. “I’m in my self-love era. Beware.” They sat on the couch and shared ice cream straight from the tub. Talked about grief and guilt and the strange ways we shrink ourselves for love.

“I used to think being a good partner meant changing who I was,” Ava admitted. “Now I think it means being whole enough not to lose myself.”

The next morning, Ava writes a letter to her younger self.

‘Dear Me,

I’m sorry. I believed them when they said you weren’t enough. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you sooner. But I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.

You are not too loud or too soft or too weird or too quiet. You are not too much. You are just right.

You’re allowed to take up space.

You’re allowed to start over.

You’re allowed to love yourself even before you feel ready.

And when the world tries to hand you old mirrors, show them how brightly you burn.’

Love, Me.

She read it aloud to Brittany the next time they met. They both cried.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

A week later, they met at Ava’s apartment again—just an ordinary Tuesday. Rain tickled softly at the windows, and there was music playing low in the background—some mellow acoustic guitar, the kind that holds space without demanding it.

They sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by throw blankets and half-eaten takeout. The conversation was light at first—memes, work rants, the latest dating app horror story—but the air shifted when Brittany picked up the printed copy of Ava’s letter that had been sitting on the coffee table.

She held it gently, like something sacred.

“I’ve read this like... seven times,” she said quietly. “Every time, it feels like you wrote it to me, too.”

Ava gave her a soft smile. “Maybe I did.”

Brittany’s hands trembled. Her voice cracked as she asked, “Do you think people like us ever really heal? Or do we just carry it better?”

Ava hesitated. “Maybe a little of both.”

Brittany set the letter down and looked at Ava—looked at her like she was finally allowing herself to be seen, too.

“I said some horrible things to you,” she whispered. “I still don’t know how you can even look at me, let alone call me your friend.”

Ava felt her throat tighten. “Because I’ve been you.”

Silence stretched between them. Rain tapped the glass like fingers drumming on skin.

“I was so angry back then,” Brittany admitted, tears spilling now, slow and certain. “At everyone. At myself. I wanted someone else to hurt so I didn’t have to be the only one bleeding.”

Ava didn’t say anything at first. She just crawled across the space between them and wrapped her arms around Brittany.

And Brittany collapsed into her.

No words. Just the raw, wordless ache of forgiveness and grief and the deep, soul-splitting relief of finally being seen—not as who they had been, but who they were becoming.

They cried into each other’s shoulders. Brittany sobbed openly, the way people only do when they’re finally safe. And Ava held her like she was holding her past self, too—like she was cradling every girl who ever thought she had to earn softness, every woman who thought love meant shrinking.

“You’re allowed to be whole,” Ava murmured into her hair.

“So are you,” Brittany whispered back.

Later, after the tears had dried and the rain had faded into the mist, they sat quietly, leaning against the couch. Brittany’s head rested on Ava’s shoulder, and neither of them felt the need to move.

“I don’t think I ever had a real friend before you,” Brittany said.

Ava exhaled. “I don’t think I ever had me before now.”

They both smiled.

Months passed.

Ava didn’t magically become someone else.

But she became more herself.

She still had bad days. Still doubted. Still flinched sometimes at her reflection.

But now, she spoke to that reflection like a friend. A friend she was learning to cherish.

One night, as they walked back from a poetry slam, Brittany turned to her and said, “You know, I never thought we’d be friends.”

Ava laughed. “Me neither.”

“I’m glad we are.”

“Me too.”

They didn’t hug. They didn’t need to.

The air between them was full of something warmer.

Forgiveness. Growth. Maybe even love—the kind that doesn’t need romance to make it real.

Ava walked home alone, moonlight pooling at her feet, and felt something bloom in her chest.

Not a happy ending.

But a beginning.

And this time, it was hers. A quiet knowing that she was never truly lost—just waiting to find her way back to herself.