Take Flight - Josie's journey #Wattys2017

Prologue

On this day, it's been eighteen months since I've lost my identity.

18 months since I've lost my whole knowledge about who I am as a person.

I remember it all so clearly. How I stood in front of the antique mirror in the hallway of my apartment, looking at my own reflection as if I'd never seen it before.

The blank and unemotional expression in those dark brown eyes is still haunting me to this day. I remember how puffy they were, sore from the salty streams my tears had left behind.

I remember the lips, usually pink and soft, that were cracked and covered in little droplets of blood, traces from my nervous biting.

I can still see the black hair, messy from tearing it in a desperate attempt to excel the pain of a breaking heart, even if only for a few seconds. Of course it didn't work. Instead it took me weeks to get rid off the elflock it created.

I remember thinking: 

This is not me. Who is this stranger? What have I done to myself?

It wasn't the ugliness that shocked me, neither the snot running down my nose nor the bloated cheeks. Of course it wasn't a pleasant sight, but what made it so disturbing was the fact, that I saw a perfect reflection of how I felt inside.

I felt humiliated and betrayed. 

Despair and horror were raging like a storm, wild and out of control.

And at the same time, there was nothing. Nothing but numbness.

Motionless I stood there and as the emptiness took possession of my body and soul, I was asking the strange silhouette over and over again:

Who are you?

What have you done to Josie?