I stared in the mirror, squinting my eyes at the too skinny girl in front of me. Look at me I thought. Nobody is ever going to want me. The girl looking back at me had tiny cuts on her skin from where she couldn’t stop picking. Her hair was shorn short, from a buzz cut she’d given herself. The hair cut from Hell. Her too big brown eyes looked back at me, tears shimming behind them.

To look at her, you wouldn’t think she was much. I didn’t think she was much. She was a plain girl who with enough practice could blend right into the wall, and people just looked right past her. Her wild cat eyes darted around my face, picking out the imperfections, wishing so much, that there were things she could change.

Her lips were chapped, her skin was dry and she had dark bags under her eyes. I couldn’t look her in the eye. All I could see was her every failure. One more imperfection. One more heartbreaking mistake. My heart hurt. Hers did too.

I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror. Did I ever really know her to begin with? Can it be that I’m not meant to play this part? That I’m not really who I pretend to be? I searched her face carefully. If I was truly to be myself, I thought, lifting my fingers to my reflection, I would break my family’s heart.

Who was that girl staring back at me? Why is my reflection someone I don’t know? How is it that you can spend your whole life staring into a mirror, hoping you’ll like what you see, and then not know the person looking back at you?

I sighed. I am tired of pretending. Try as I might, somehow I cannot hide, who I am, though God knows I’ve tried. When will my reflection show who I am inside?

When will my reflection show who I am inside?