everything from the stars to the earth

15.*

She bares her teeth at me from inside the mirror. "Oh, look at you," she croons and I notice the way her eyes drag across my skin expectantly, like dragging a razor blade and it hurts. The way she looks at me- I feel the urge to curl in ward. "Pathetic. Worthless. Nothing. Fat. No one cares about you, you follow?"

She looks just like me, I finally notice.

A me with hatred in black and skin the same color as wax. A me with a cruel smile and one that wraps her arms around people in a hug just to suffocate them in wiry limbs.

"Hello, dearest," she says again and it's not the black veins that stand stark in her eyes, or the bruised hips or the scarred arms that scare me. It's the tilt of her smile as she smiles coldly at me, and it sends shivers down my spine.

But what scares me the most is the black letters painted out in her forehead.

DEPRESSION

-

It takes so many years to get rid of her. To get rid of the girl, the woman, the hatred in the mirror that sneers back at me every time I go to the bathroom. Every time I wake up and try to wash my face, but instead I forget what it means to care for myself and instead catch myself looking at her.

I took medication. I went to therapy. It took months and years but she grew smaller, smaller in size and her voice was but a whisper that I could barely hear. The woman in the mirror looks healthier, actually.

The bruised hips heal. The scarred arms are still scarred, but they're faded. The black veins in her eyes fade and are replaced with a brown that catches the fire light of the sun in the morning, my eyes.

She's growing smaller. She's not as influential on my life.

I smile and kiss my significant other on the cheek when I get up in the morning. They don't stir but I get up, get up to brush my teeth. And I notice that she's in the mirror anymore, that she's not looking back at me with dark thoughts on her tongue.

*done off of a writing prompt: 'write about your worst hello and your favorite goodbye'.