I Looked into the mirror and I didn’t see me….

The morning sunlight poured into my small apartment, casting long shadows on the floor. I shuffled into the bathroom, bleary-eyed, and flicked on the light. The mirror greeted me, as it always did, but something was wrong.

It wasn’t me staring back.

I froze, gripping the edge of the sink. My face was gone—replaced by someone else’s. A stranger. They had the same dark curls, the same faint scar running across their left eyebrow. But their eyes… those eyes weren’t mine.

They were cold, empty, as if they belonged to someone who had lived through years I hadn’t.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

The reflection smirked, a cruel twist of lips that I didn’t command.

“Who are you?” it asked back, voice low and mocking.

I stumbled back, heart pounding. This had to be a dream, some bizarre hallucination brought on by too much work and too little sleep. But no amount of blinking or pinching brought my face back.

I turned on the faucet, splashing cold water onto my skin, and dared another glance at the mirror. The stranger was still there, leaning closer now, inspecting me as though I were the one out of place.

“You don’t remember, do you?” they asked, their tone almost pitying.

“Remember what?” My voice cracked.

“That I’m what’s left. The pieces you’ve hidden away.”

I shook my head. “No. You’re not real. This is—this is some kind of mental break—”

The stranger laughed, bitter and sharp. “Oh, I’m real. More real than you’d like to admit. All those times you pretended everything was fine? All the smiles you forced, the truths you buried? You created me.”

I stared at them, my mind racing. Memories I’d long suppressed began to surface—moments of anger, sadness, and fear that I had locked away, hoping they’d disappear. I had spent years building walls around them, convincing myself they didn’t exist. But now, here they were, staring back at me, undeniable.

“I… I didn’t mean to…” I whispered.

The reflection softened, their eyes no longer cold but filled with something that looked like understanding.

“It’s not about blame,” they said. “It’s about acknowledgment. You can’t move forward if you keep pretending I’m not here.”

I took a shaky breath, my chest tightening with a mix of fear and relief. “What do I do?”

“Look at me,” they said simply. “Really look. Stop hiding.”

So I did. For the first time, I faced the stranger in the mirror. I saw the pain, the anger, the grief—but I also saw strength, resilience, and hope. They weren’t just a stranger. They were a part of me, a part I had neglected for far too long.

As I stared, their features began to shift, subtly at first, then more distinctly. The eyes became my own, the smirk softened into my hesitant smile. The stranger faded, and there I was.

Me.

For the first time in years, I truly saw myself. And I wasn’t afraid.

-🦩