They say when you feel down, you shouldn’t treat yourself as “you” but regard yourself as a best friend. But all I felt was hate toward the “me” taking that test called life, the “me” that delivered a hard solid F for the me of the present. Failure was hard to swallow, and I think it was stuck in my throat. After hours of staring at the ceiling and letting my thoughts spiral towards a never ending fall, I finally got up and walked into the bathroom.
Darkness was all I saw, so I flicked the switch of the light. The mirror presented me in the mirror. In a vomit-like manner, a pang of hatred boiled all the way up into my throat. But instead of breaking my eyes away from me, I stared back at me in a trance-like state.
Maybe I wasn’t alone in that bathroom; my reflection was there to accompany. No matter which way I turned, it always looked back with the most curious, questioning eyes I’ve seen from anyone.
I couldn’t hold the stare for much longer, so I settled for looking at other places. There were bags under those eyes, hair that definitely needed a trim, and a worrisome forehead wrinkle for the perpetual look I held on my face.
“You need some help,” I muttered to the reflection.
“Help.” The reflection mouthed it back to me.
Before I knew it, I was splayed out on the bed with no motivation to get up, no motivation to get out, no motivation to do anything but to, of course, head back into the room which contained the Echo of me. And in I went, looking at the flipped version of me behind the glass.
“I feel empty.”
“Empty?” The reflection mouthed back.
“Yes. Empty. I’ve been thinking about it,” I murmured, rolling up my sleeve all the way up to my shoulder and scratching at the skin. The mirror copied me till the arm was covered with off-color streaks of scratches.
“Would the way to fill this gaping void,” I pondered outloud, “be done by gorging on satisfaction that won’t last?” I rolled down my sleeve and turned back to my audience. “Or would it be better to completely erase the little sorrowful fibers of existence? Oh, but that’s a horribly twisted way of putting it, right?”
“Right,” disappeared from the reflection’s lips as soon as I finished my sentence.
The eyes that glanced back were filled with pity. I scrunched up my nose in a bit of an annoyance.
I pulled the daunting razor out of the drawers.
It took time, but eventually I got rid of all the hair. I let the icy water rinse away it with bubbly white foam.
I looked up at the reflection; I glanced across the leftover tracks of shaving cream. “I don’t feel like I deserve anything good anymore. Am I a bad person? How am I supposed to enjoy life? How am I supposed to enjoy it?”
“Enjoy it.”
“That’s far too simple.”
“Simple” It hummed softly. If I imagined hard enough, it looked as if the reflection smirked.