The mirror that always stood in the corner of the room by the door we entered through, now stood in the middle of the circle of chairs.
Being careful not to look at the mirror, I made my way to last empty seat between Felix and Avery. No one was talking, not even Cleo who always seemed to be yapping away about something to someone. She kept her gaze directed at the mirror lost in thought.
After a few moments she broke the silence. “So yawl ready for an exciting exercise today?”
No one spoke.
“We are gonna be doing some self-reflections today. I am gonna give you a marker and you are gonna write on that there mirror.” She pointed a red marker in the direction of the mirror. “You are gonna jot down what you see. Nothing too hard, right?” Cleo moved her gaze onto each of us. “So who wants to go first?”
We remained stoic; played possum; whatever you want to call it. If we didn’t move she wouldn’t see us. That was the logic going through my head.
I hadn’t looked in a mirror for months. There was nothing I wanted to see in it. Nothing worth admiring. I didn’t need to see myself to hate myself.
“Bria, you ready?” Cleo asked. “You look like you have a lot on your mind.”
Slowly Bria rose to her feet and took the marker from Cleo. Each step she took towards the mirror seemed to take all her strength. When she finally stood in front of the mirror she stared directly into it. She wasn’t looking at herself, but more so through the mirror.
Uncapping the marker, and pushing it against the mirror, she began to write. The room was silent except for the sound of the marker squeaking against the mirror.
Bria wrote for a long time before her I could hear her gasping for breath. She didn’t stop writing, she pushed through it. The sound of the squeaking rose with her gasps. Her hand rushed across the mirror as if the word woulds escape her if she didn’t write fast enough.
A few moments later, she stepped away from the mirror. She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, and continued to stare at the mirror. Dragging my gaze from Bria I looked at what she wrote.
My heart sunk. I couldn’t imagine how any of these thoughts went through her head when she looked at herself. I couldn’t imagine thinking that about myself. Maybe some of it, but not all of those things.
Ugly. Worthless. Slut. Bitch. Stupid. Waste of time. Fat. Piece of shit. Unlovable. Depressing. Helpless. Hopeless.
The list went on and on. Bria was shaking starting at the mirror. She looked accepting — no, defeated when she looked over the mirror. She looked like someone who had given up on everything and had accepted she will never be able to not be those terrible things.
Cleo stared at the mirror and then she took a step forward pulling her sleeve over her hand and wiped away one of the things Bria had written down. She the pulled a blue marker out of the pocket of her green jumpsuit and wrote.
Stepping back she admired her work. I craned my neck to see what she had written.
Empowering.
She handed the marker to Wiley. And one by one the marker was passed around to replace something Bria had written with something more honest, more worthy of being on the mirror.
When it was my turn, I didn’t know what to write. Everything on the mirror was true, and I could only think of synonyms to those words. No, I had to think of something different than to everything else already on the mirror.
I could feel the stares on the back of my neck, waiting to see what I was going to write. What was there to write? What would I want hear? What did I want to hear?
Noticed.
I handed the marker off to Avery, and sat back down in my seat biting my lips nervously.
When everyone had gone and all the red was gone, Cleo put an arm around Bria’s shoulders. Bria stared at the mirror, tears silently falling down her face.
“I don’t believe this,” Bria whispered. “I don’t believe that’s me.”
“It is you,” Cleo said softly. “Why would you be anything else? You are empowering. You are bright. You are beautiful. You are kind. You aren’t a waste of space. You’re hopeful. You’re noticed. You’re wanted. Why can’t you believe that?”
“I have nothing to believe in,” Bria cried. “You are all just being nice.”
“You have nothing to believe in?” Cleo said with a slight laugh. “Believe in yourself. That’s all you need to believe in.”
Bria nodded. “I’m not worthless?”
“No, you’re not,” Cleo said with a kind smile.
“I’m not worthless.” Bria whispered.
______________
Okay so it's not edited. I'm not really writing anymore, sorry to say. This means updates will be very infrequent, but I do plan on finishing this story. Sorry you all had to wait so long. This chapter is not what I wanted it to be, but after rewriting it so many times I have decided I just need to move on.
I hope you all enjoyed it. Remember to vote and comment :)
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Falling Colors
Teen Fiction"The unfixable; the shattered; the torn; the broken. They all come here. It's my job to remake them, because once its broken there is no going back to the way it was. It must be remade." Six individuals. Six unique stories. Five exercises. One...
