She didn't always hate mirrors.That came later.
In the beginning, she just… noticed.That she looked different.That her stomach stuck out more. That her thighs rubbed when she walked.
She was seven the first time someone called her fat.A cousin. Laughing.Not cruelly. Just… easily. Like it was a fact. Like it was allowed.
It stayed.
By nine, she understood how to fold herself into the background.To shrink in spirit if not in size.To take the joke. Laugh along.To let the other girls take center stage.The slimmer ones. The shinier ones. The ones who wore sleeveless dresses without fear.
She was nice.Nice girls don't complain.Nice girls help carry bags and pass notes and stay behind in pictures so the camera captures the right angles.
At thirteen, she tried starving.
Just a little at first.Skipping breakfast.Then hiding lunch.Then pretending to be full at dinner.
She liked the feeling of hunger.It made her feel like she was doing something about it.Every growl in her stomach felt like proof...proof that she deserved a little less hate. A little more space.
When she fainted during assembly, the nurse said she was "overheated."
She didn't correct her.
By sixteen, she was the girl next to the girl boys noticed.The one walking slightly behind.The one they didn't even see...not to mock, not to talk to, not to smile at.
She was there.But not really.
Sometimes, a boy would come over to talk.But not to her.Always to her beautiful friend.
So she'd slow her pace.Drift behind.Cross the road to buy something she didn't need...gum, a pen, anything. Just so she wouldn't have to stand there and be the invisible one in a conversation she was never part of.
She wasn't afraid of rejection.Rejection would mean she existed.She was afraid of the way they didn't even glance in her direction.
She knew her place.She didn't belong in moments like that.
She smiled anyway.She laughed on cue.She listened when her friend shared every detail of her crushes, her texts, her secret flings.
And she kept her own silence wrapped in layers.
No one ever asked what she felt.No one noticed the way her hands clenched inside her sleeves.No one saw how she disappeared in plain sight.
She had mastered the art of being near people,without ever really being with them.
She didn't want to be useful.She didn't want to be liked.She just wanted to be seen.
Even if just once.