I leaned my back against the bathroom door, my breaths coming in such rapid bursts I was growing lightheaded. But the universe had no plans to let me escape from reality. Escape from myself.
Directly across from me was a large circular mirror in a gold frame, and within it was a set of eyes staring back at me with such innocence and heartbreak, I felt my own heart incinerate into a pile of ash at my feet. Tears ran like rivers down my cheeks.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I whispered to the girl in the mirror, inching closer. “I’m so …” A sob hitched in my throat. “I’m so sorry.”
Her arms reached out for me, and for the cruelest second, I almost believed she was with me. That I could reach through the glass and finally hold the other half of my heart.
She wept for me just as helplessly as I cried for her.
Same heartbreak, different reasons. She hated to see me in pain, and my heart shattered to know I’d never get her back.
The desire was so intense that I kept moving forward, desperate to reach her. Except, when my fingertips finally made contact, I was met with cold, hard reality. She was gone, and the only person left was a sad, pathetic replica who couldn’t do anything right.
“No,” I cried. “Please, come back. Please.” I pressed my palm flat against the mirror as wave after wave of crushing sorrow battered me from the inside. “I don’t want to be here without you. Please.”
The unfairness was so cruel. So pointless and arbitrary. I couldn’t take it any longer. I didn’t want to.
My face crumpled with the weight of the crushing expectations and my monumental failures. My chest heaved with a quaking breath as I pulled back my fist and let it slam into the sadistic mirage of a life I’d never get back, letting loose a scream filled with every suffocating, heart-wrenching emotion festering deep inside me.
