self-respect

self-respect/self-love

Her eyes, fixated on the glowing rectangle in her clammy hands, follow the progress of a loading bar. Messy brown hair slumps over hunched shoulders, her whole body limp and deflated. Opposite her, a tall mirror stands upright in front of her bed; she looks anywhere and everywhere except at it. Biting absently into her lip, she paints her teeth red without even realizing. She shivers as she waits, the cold air of her room the only cloak covering her flesh. A message blips onto the screen of her phone.

"Hmm," it says, "I don't think that's the best you can do. Send me another."

The girl's stomach churns when she sees the response, and her breath falters. Did she do something wrong? And... another one? A sickish feeling pools in her core, writhing and winding and biting like a serpent. She lifts up her phone and begins to type her refusal with trembling digits, but before she can even answer, another text comes through.

"Because you wouldn't want this sent to all my friends, would you?"

The snake in her stomach thrashes, its bitter venom seeping through her skin. Immediately her body erupts into prickles, each pinching bump another dot turning her body into a trembling work of pointillism. She re-reads the words, each one a droplet of ink pooling and blacking out her focus. The ferocious reptile then drinks the blood from her face, painting her with a ghostly paleness.

Just this one more, she thinks, and her lips silently outline those words, fill them in, make them have meaning this time. I'll finally be good enough, and then he'll like me.

Quaking, the sixteen year old unfurls her body. Like origami being shred apart, she stands up and bares the milky planes of her flesh in front of the mirror. Like fixing crumpled paper, she smooths out the folds in her hair and makes an effort to hold her head aloft, trying to hide her flaws and undo her fears. Her arms unfold, but the chilling feeling in the room replaces them and wraps around her instead. Breathing deeply, she sucks in her stomach, pulling her figure uncomfortably into what the recipient will deem appropriate. Still inhaling, she accidentally breathes the ice from the air and all at once her body freezes. Without pausing to think, to regret, she takes the picture at once. Her fingers, scuttling across her keyboard like rats, act by muscle memory and instantly send the image.

She throws her phone to the bed, repulsed. A short huffing exhale is accompanied by watery eyes, and she can't look at the glass anymore. Her knees buckle and her body melts to the floor. How many times has she posed like that, snapping photos and hoping for a reaction? More than she can remember. The first splashes of blue begin pouring down her pale cheeks, mingling with the coating of makeup on her face and splattering to the canvas of the ground.

Her thoughts betray her and begin to spiral, coiling like another snake preparing to strike. What if he was right? What if he's the only one who would ever love her? The girl's mind whirled and her stomach spun in circles around it. Fighting the urge to vomit in her disgust, streaks of wet hurting continued to stream from her stinging eyes.

A noise from billions of miles away startled her back to her room. From her bed, her phone played the sickly chime that only his texts screamed. She jumped towards it, skin prickled and on fire once again. Brushing stains from her cheeks eagerly, to better see the response, she picked up the device. Her brain began spitting out anxious jargon, looping around one idea and repeating it as she stared at the screen.

Time to see, time to see what he thinks. Please let me be good enough this time. I'm sure he'll think I was good enough this time.

The girl stops herself sharply, catching this trickle of thoughts. Eyes wide in realization, she drops her phone back to her sheets, letting it be eaten up and washed away by the wave of pure white. She does not allow herself to catch a single word of the message.

Instead, she stumbles back towards the mirror, emotions bubbling so strongly within her that each breath was the blow of a hammer and that each step closer threatened to shatter the glass. She gets closer, closer, until her nose presses against the nose of her apparition. What does he see, when he looks at her? She looks into her own eyes, curious, and is perplexed by the intensity she sees. She sees copper stretched across a honey background, bright and sharp and infinitely strong. Flecks of gold and amber swim in a pool of melted chocolate, revealing a depth and weight that she did not know she had within her.

She is not as simple as he wanted her to be.

In a singular fluid motion, she slips a robe over her exposed shape and straightens her back. That is not for him, or for anyone else but her, to see any longer. A warmth flooded throughout her body. Filled with a new, joyful fervour, she springs to her feet and fishes her phone from her sheets. Without even looking, or caring to look, at the text that she received, she blocks his number. Swiping and tapping and fiddling with the keyboard, she erases every single message that he has ever sent.

Deep within her, the snake that had swallowed her whole life withered and died. Turning towards the mirror one final time, the girl looked at herself

and smiled.