THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR - by Favour Nwaoru

I met a girl once… not in real life, but in the kind of mirror you don’t talk about.She couldn’t have been more than thirteen, yet she carried the kind of heaviness adults hide behind fine clothes and loud laughter.<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000353861.jpg"/> She was born from violence.A child conceived on a night her mother still refuses to remember…Her family tried. They truly did. They tried not to bring it up, loved her the best they could.But love does not erase the way a room shifts when a secret enters. Her biological father returned years later… older, quieter, bruised by prison walls and his own regrets.He wanted to know her. And she wanted to believe him.So she visited… just once.<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000353860.jpg"/>That weekend destroyed everything. Her best friend was hurt first, forced into silence before she could even scream…Then they turned to her.By the time help arrived, both girls were in the hospital: one fighting for her life, one fighting for her future. Her friend survived, but with a pregnancy she wasn’t ready for.The girl survived too… but with scars too deep for any stitch to hold.She lost a pregnancy before anyone knew it existed.She lost trust before she even understood the word.<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000353859.jpg"/>Still, she grew.She ran track. She won medals. She sang with a voice too soft for the storms she’d lived through.She read her way into brilliance. Spoke with grace. Cut her hair low. Dressed like someone trying to outrun her own reflection.People clapped for her. Called her strong. Called her gifted.No one noticed she was breaking in places no light could reach…<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000353858.jpg"/>She had PCOS.She hid her fears in jokes.When she tried to open up, people told her to be grateful… because “at least she didn’t get pregnant.” Her father, the one who hurt her, died serving in the military.Strangely… painfully… she mourned him...Trauma is complicated like that. Now she is older. Almost done with school.A high achiever. A “star.”People look at her and see perfection.But she has lost her spark… and she knows it.She’s exhausted from playing who everyone needs her to be. Soon they’ll ask her, “Where is your boyfriend?”Soon someone will whisper, “Why are you still single?”They won’t know that men, for her, feel like locked doors she’s too tired to open… She’s drowning quietly.And she’s so good at smiling that nobody notices.<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000353863.jpg"/>I watched her live out all of this.I watched her break, heal, break again.I watched her try… And then… There is no girl. I woke up.It was me… the tired student asleep on her books.She was the version of me I wish people understood. <img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000353857.jpg"/>I created her... because I can’t explain my exhaustion out loud.In real life, nothing happened… I’m just drowning quietly.And nobody knows…

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