Recently, I was working on a short story called From Everyone to Every Individual. It is a story that stresses the importance of self-reflection, and getting some alone time to align our heart with our mind. During the hustle and bustle of life, I think it is easy to get so busy that we fail to have time for ourselves. This way, being overwhelmed by life leads to many mental health problems, especially in teenagers. I hope this short story provides you inspiration to try and find those precious moments of alone time in your life, where you can reflect upon yourself.

From Everyone to Every Individual

The world began to slow around me. I look around, and I see the faces of people. I tell myself that these are my people. These are friends, family, and people I’ve known for a long time. I try to tell myself that these people are my well-wishers and that they care for me. But that small part of me wonders, do they care? In their eyes, I don’t see a reflection of myself, but rather, that of a girl whom I don’t know. It’s the same girl from the mirror. I see that girl in the eyes of all my people. I don’t like looking at her, but I keep seeing. It’s almost as if the people around me want to torture me by making me feel like the girl from my reflections. No, I tell myself, not from my reflections. I don’t know her. She’s just the girl from the mirror. She looks like me, but is anything but. Or so I tell myself because I need that to be true. I can’t become the girl in the mirror.

I hate looking in the mirror. Looking here, all I see is a state of confusion. I see a person staring back at me through the mirror. That person looks so much like me that some people might even say that we are the same. My “reflection,” they say. Personally, I think that’s an absurd thought. The person in the mirror and I could not be more different. The person in the mirror, her dark brown eyes carries a look of agitation. They keep wandering, all across the room. My dark brown eyes, on the other hand, are steady. There is no reason for my eyes to be anything but steady. The girl’s wrists are writhing and twisting, as though someone has them handcuffed. Poor girl, I certainly hope she slips out of her handcuffs and becomes free. My hands, on the other hand, are adorned with a gold bracelet. My hands are placed firmly on my waist, as though in a picture-perfect stance. The “mirror-girl” is biting her lips so hard that I see dents in her red lips. And her face carries lines that make her seem much older than she is. The lines make her seem as though the world has pushed, pulled, and twisted her around in a game of tug of war, and now thrown her in this state of helplessness and indecision.

I, on the other hand, am not in the pitiful state of the mirror-girl. I live my life with certainty, clear goals and aspirations, and satisfaction. Just like now. Now, I’m getting ready to be the perfect host that everyone expects on the day of a huge community gathering. I add a second coating of lipstick over my already bright red lips. Too much, I think for a second. On second thought, however, I validate my decision by thinking of how the lipstick gives me a friendly, yet mature look when I smile and greet the guests. Perfect, everyone will love me! See? I live my life with certainty, clear goals and aspirations, and satisfaction.

As I stand with my hands resting on the railing of the staircase, I study each one of the guests. Of course, I stand in a place where no one can see me. The last thing I want is for them to think of me as The Creepy Stalker Girl.

I see a woman with curly, dark brown hair, and huge eyes that carry a sort of roguish curiosity, entering our living room. Who is she? I think to myself. It doesn’t matter who she is, it just matters how she sees me. Looking at her, she seems like the type of person who would enjoy gossip and rumors. As long as I listened to her less-than-kind thoughts about people, and I contributed some of my own, we would be best friends.

I started making a mental jot notes list about how I should act with each of the guests.

• Curly brown-haired woman: Pretend that she’s my best friend

Next, I see my Grade 5 math teacher. Why is he here again? I think, but then I tell myself that he probably lives around the same community as us. I remember him lecturing me and my classmates in Grade 5 about how, in order to succeed, we were supposed to have our entire life planned out by the time we reached high school.

I added a new addition to my list:

• Grade 5 math teacher: Act like I’ve got the next 20 years of my life planned out. Don’t act like I’m failing at every aspect of life.

I’m NOT failing at life, I assure myself, I am living my life with certainty, clear goals and aspirations, and satisfaction. 

And so, I went on for another 10 minutes, scrutinizing the faces of each guest who felt important to me. By the time I’d inspected all the guests, my list had grown so long that I had a hard time memorizing everything. It was as if adding more and more people to the list was switching around the information about the others.

Who am I best friends with? Oh yeah, it’s the curly-haired woman.

Who do I give high-school advice to? Oh yeah, it’s for the blonde girl who goes to that fancy private school.

Who do I impress with my flattery skills?

Whose jokes do I laugh at?

Who do I show off my scholastic achievements with?

Who, who, who,?

It was as though all the questions were escaping the confines of the list, and were zipping about all over the place. The more I tried to revive the neatness and order of my list, the more the information in the list insisted on adding to the chaos in my already disorderly mind. It was as if my mind and my heart had become two separate entities, and were fighting to take control of me. My heart wished with all its eagerness for my immaculateness and confidence to return. Just a few minutes ago, I was so determined that I would impress everyone at the gathering today, and would be the perfect host that everyone would want me to be. My heart knew this, and it was on my side. My mind, on the other hand, only wished ill for me. It wants me to screw up in front of all the guests and embarrass myself. It wanted me to be dismissed and rejected by all the guests. My mind, which a few minutes ago, had been my source of confidence, had now become the source of uncertainty and doubt for me.

That’s not right, I told myself, I am never uncertain about anything. I live my life with certainty, clear goals and aspirations, and satisfaction. 

With this assurance, I was determined that I was not going to let my mind win. My heart, which was on my side, would be the victor of the battle of leaving a good impression on the guests.

As I walked down the stairs to face the guests, I tried to tell myself that my heart would always have my back, and it would help me to win the love, and affection of the guests. I told myself that the strong will of my heart would overpower my mind’s attempts to instill a feeling of rejection in me. However, no matter what I told myself, I could not bring back the feeling of pride and self-confidence that I initially had in me. A darkness was creeping over, and corrupting the feeling of certainty and steadiness I had before. I kept telling myself that I was in control of myself and was doing what was best for me. This darkness, however, had left me with a feeling that the control that I had in my life was slipping away, and moving into someone else’s hands. Whose hands, I do not know.

Being so lost in my thoughts, I completely forgot that I had a group of guests whose admiration and praise I had to win. I cursed my mind again and silently demanded that it leave me free to do what I wanted. If I did not get my mind on my side again, it could end up becoming the reason for my undoing. But…that problem had to wait. I managed to put forth my biggest, and brightest smile because standing in front of me were a pair of two eyes.

And in those eyes, I did not see myself. I saw the mirror girl.

I did not know what to do. I knew that I should look at the woman whose eyes those were. The woman with the frizzy black hair. Wasn’t that the cook? The doctor? I could not recall her description fitting my mental list of all the guests. I should be worried about that, but I didn’t care. The only thing that I cared about was her eyes and the girl who I could see in those eyes.

It was absurd and nonsensical seeing the mirror girl there. I am supposed to see myself through the woman’s eyes. I am supposed to see a strong, and confident young woman who is in control of her life. Instead, I see her. I see a vulnerable little girl, chewing her lips, her eyes looking as though they were on the verge of tears. She was a broken and helpless little animal. Anyone looking at her would feel sympathy.

But not me. I felt rage, not sympathy. This rage boiled and bubbled up from the depths of my heart, and shook my whole body. The girl did not deserve sympathy for barging into my life and ruining my day to win everyone’s praise. Maybe she was just jealous. No one would admire a broken girl hiding in the mirror. But I had the potential to win everyone’s appreciation. Everyone likes someone like me. Someone who can be an entertaining host, a perfect friend, a thoughtful student, all the time. I can make everyone like me, and it is only natural that the mirror girl would envy me for this.

Yeah, that’s probably just it. She’s just jealous because she can never be me. I tell myself.

And I desperately want to believe what I just told myself. I want to believe that I am doing fine, and am not fretful, nervous, and doubtful like the mirror-girl.

But, I just feel…scared. Staring more and more at the mirror girl in the woman’s eyes, I feel more and more lost. Lost…like I don’t know who I am. The more I think of the mirror girl, the more I feel like I’m losing a part of myself. Looking at her awkward behavior, I start to feel uncomfortable at the gathering that I am at.

The woman with frizzy black hair, whose eyes were carrying the mirror girl was now studying me with a look of concern. She had probably tried talking to me, maybe had asked how I was doing, but I hadn’t responded. I stood frozen, looking at the mirror girl. The other guests had also started turning my way and had begun to look at me with the same expression of concern.

No, it wasn’t concern…it was pity. They were looking at me with pity because I looked like a miserable little girl. A miserable little girl who was too anxious to greet the guests. And this made me mad. I didn’t need their pity. I needed their praise, their approval. I needed them to think that I was strong, powerful, and mature. Pity made me seem weak. Weak was the mirror girl.

It happened again. That mention of the mirror girl sent a second shot of that nervousness from my heart, up my hands and legs, and into my mind. In my mind, I was expecting a frenzy. A frenzy where the names of all the guests were whizzing about. Where the expectations that I had placed upon myself would be hanging. Hanging, like apples from a tree. Hanging low enough so that I could see it, and raise my hands to reach for it, to grasp hold of it. And hanging at a high enough height so that just as my fingers are about to wrap around the fruit, the fruit goes out of my reach.

But surprisingly, as the shot of nervousness and confusion reaches my head, I only hear silence. No lists of people and names running around. No trees of expectations growing. Only silence. And just as the nervousness reaches my head, I see a picture of the mirror girl. Only, this time, in the silence of my mind, I don’t see the mirror girl as a stranger. A small part of my mind is trying to urge me to get back into the defensive mode, where I try to invalidate the possibility of the mirror girl being a part of me. The majority of my mind, however, sees the mirror girl through a different lens. My mind sees beyond her wandering eyes, her bitten lips, and her writhing hands, and sees her as a person full of secrets. A person who has the potential to make her mark on the world. A person who I can be myself with.

I look at the woman with the black frizzy hair. She asked me how I was doing.

I said, “Great, thanks to your mirror.”