mirrors
title: mirrors
word count: 1065
summary: the mirror doesn't show what's inside
warning: mentions of self-harm
His insecurities fester in his mind, roll about in his stomach and slice at his insides as they force their way up to his throat. They distort everything he sees, twist his spine to stay hidden and threaten to spill out his eyes and down his cheeks; but they always get choked down, forced away by painful swallows and teeth grinding together and eyelids providing quick solace in darkness and another horrible thought taking root at the base of his mind because 'no one would care, no one wants to hear that.'
Disgusting.
Sometimes, though, they rush out in to the darkness of his bedroom, where his empty eyes and empty smiles meet the empty walls. They fill the room and his lungs and curl their bony, unforgiving fingers around the delicate skin of his neck and squeeze, until he can't breathe and there is nothing else he can do. They tighten and he chokes and suffocates until tears spill out of his eyes without permission and his hands clutch desperately at the skin over his heart and stretched across his ribs because it hurts and it never stops. His strength rushes away from him and his legs give out, his body collapsing - sometimes he ends up on his bed, sometimes he slumps to the floor, sometimes draped across the two - and every pleasant memory cowering in the back of his mind flees in fear and hides somewhere in the shadowed corners or his room.
He searches and grasps for anything - often thin air, he can't find the memories, let alone reach for them - as his attempts grow pathetic and increasingly violent until there are shards scattered about his feet, embedded into his skin and droplets of crimson paint dripping down his arms, dropping from his fingertips to the floor but there's still throbbing pain in his chest which no other pain can distract him from.
It's no darker behind his eyelids than in the room.
Blankets may be a shield from the monsters under the bed and in the closet, but what good does an outer layer of protection when the enemy is already inside?
'The mirror doesn't show what's inside.'
And he's grateful. If mirrors showed everything, he wouldn't have to use his bare palms and bruised, bloodied knuckles - someone else would smash it for him. No one wants to look at something so ugly and torn. It’s instinct, just human nature, to destroy eyesores, to isolate the ugly, to kill the disgraces.
In a feeble attempt to hide what he’d done, he'll wipe his face and hands clean in the morning, disguise the marks left by the fingers and pound his chest until he's numb. And he'll take a good look at what's left of the mirror, mourn the loss of yet another (stupid, stupid, stupid) mirror and hide the damage on the mirror and on him with clothes larger than he is and practice his lies in the cracked glass and everything starts all over again.
And he's terrified that one day, someone might tell him what he's dying to hear (that he's good enough and he's beautiful and that he's loved and he's alive) but then the insecurities might finally rip through the fragile barriers he’s set up and attack. Unleashed into the world, there's no limit to the damage that they can do.
(That he can do.)
The last thing he wants is for someone to become his mirror.
He comes home to broken glass littered on the floor, reflecting broken fragments on himself and the blank ceiling of the room, clinging to pile of sweaters and jeans two sizes too big.
He needs a new mirror, he decides.
The cycle repeats.
He needs a new sweater with a higher neck. The fingers pressed too hard last night - there are hand prints on his neck so dark that makeup won't camouflage them.
He cleans up the glass shards on the floor. He's very careful, very thorough in completing his task. He comes away from the chore with perfectly straight, perfectly spaced lines along the insides of his arms and legs.
As he applies a nearly useless layer of makeup to the marred skin of his neck, he tries to ignore how the bruises match the lines of his fingers perfectly.
His new sweaters stretch past his fingertips. How convenient. It’s winter.
He buys a new mirror and sets it up just like every other mirror before it.
He hates it.
His reflection’s eyes are sunken in. He's too skinny. He's too fat. The bags under his eyes are abominable. There's a dark, irregularly shaped spot above the collar on his shirt. (The reflection copies him when he pulls up his collar to hide it.) A spot of red on the sleeve. A rip on the left side of the fabric where his heart should be, if the reflection was alive.
But for him, where his heart is. It shouldn't be there. He doesn't need it. He doesn't want it. It's not working properly anymore.
No matter how many angry marks he leaves on his skin, his heart won't stop; it won't give up.
Maybe one day it will.
(In summer, they tell him he's beautiful and he's loved. They tell him how lucky he is to be alive and how incredibly smart and talented he is and how people envy him just like he does to others. They tell him that he's going to be okay and everything is going to be better. They tell him these things take time but everything will right itself in the end. They tell him they'll always be there. They’ll be his friends. And he's alive.
It hurts to hear. He doesn’t know them, but it still hurts, and his monster doesn't attack, even as he waits nervously, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands.
It must be tired. Maybe it's in hibernation. He's sure - it will be back. It will always come back, no matter how many times he runs away, no matter how hard they try to help him. It will always return until the day his heart finally stops.)
As long as a heart beats, as long as a heart perseveres, there is life.
He is alive, but just barely.
(The monster is alive, but just as much as he.)
end
a/n:
i'm seeing the fault in our stars tonight.
i wrote this at 11:30pm on june 10, 2014 on my phone until about 12:30am and edited it a bit at school today.
word count: 1065
summary: the mirror doesn't show what's inside
warning: mentions of self-harm
His insecurities fester in his mind, roll about in his stomach and slice at his insides as they force their way up to his throat. They distort everything he sees, twist his spine to stay hidden and threaten to spill out his eyes and down his cheeks; but they always get choked down, forced away by painful swallows and teeth grinding together and eyelids providing quick solace in darkness and another horrible thought taking root at the base of his mind because 'no one would care, no one wants to hear that.'
Disgusting.
Sometimes, though, they rush out in to the darkness of his bedroom, where his empty eyes and empty smiles meet the empty walls. They fill the room and his lungs and curl their bony, unforgiving fingers around the delicate skin of his neck and squeeze, until he can't breathe and there is nothing else he can do. They tighten and he chokes and suffocates until tears spill out of his eyes without permission and his hands clutch desperately at the skin over his heart and stretched across his ribs because it hurts and it never stops. His strength rushes away from him and his legs give out, his body collapsing - sometimes he ends up on his bed, sometimes he slumps to the floor, sometimes draped across the two - and every pleasant memory cowering in the back of his mind flees in fear and hides somewhere in the shadowed corners or his room.
He searches and grasps for anything - often thin air, he can't find the memories, let alone reach for them - as his attempts grow pathetic and increasingly violent until there are shards scattered about his feet, embedded into his skin and droplets of crimson paint dripping down his arms, dropping from his fingertips to the floor but there's still throbbing pain in his chest which no other pain can distract him from.
It's no darker behind his eyelids than in the room.
Blankets may be a shield from the monsters under the bed and in the closet, but what good does an outer layer of protection when the enemy is already inside?
'The mirror doesn't show what's inside.'
And he's grateful. If mirrors showed everything, he wouldn't have to use his bare palms and bruised, bloodied knuckles - someone else would smash it for him. No one wants to look at something so ugly and torn. It’s instinct, just human nature, to destroy eyesores, to isolate the ugly, to kill the disgraces.
In a feeble attempt to hide what he’d done, he'll wipe his face and hands clean in the morning, disguise the marks left by the fingers and pound his chest until he's numb. And he'll take a good look at what's left of the mirror, mourn the loss of yet another (stupid, stupid, stupid) mirror and hide the damage on the mirror and on him with clothes larger than he is and practice his lies in the cracked glass and everything starts all over again.
And he's terrified that one day, someone might tell him what he's dying to hear (that he's good enough and he's beautiful and that he's loved and he's alive) but then the insecurities might finally rip through the fragile barriers he’s set up and attack. Unleashed into the world, there's no limit to the damage that they can do.
(That he can do.)
The last thing he wants is for someone to become his mirror.
He comes home to broken glass littered on the floor, reflecting broken fragments on himself and the blank ceiling of the room, clinging to pile of sweaters and jeans two sizes too big.
He needs a new mirror, he decides.
The cycle repeats.
He needs a new sweater with a higher neck. The fingers pressed too hard last night - there are hand prints on his neck so dark that makeup won't camouflage them.
He cleans up the glass shards on the floor. He's very careful, very thorough in completing his task. He comes away from the chore with perfectly straight, perfectly spaced lines along the insides of his arms and legs.
As he applies a nearly useless layer of makeup to the marred skin of his neck, he tries to ignore how the bruises match the lines of his fingers perfectly.
His new sweaters stretch past his fingertips. How convenient. It’s winter.
He buys a new mirror and sets it up just like every other mirror before it.
He hates it.
His reflection’s eyes are sunken in. He's too skinny. He's too fat. The bags under his eyes are abominable. There's a dark, irregularly shaped spot above the collar on his shirt. (The reflection copies him when he pulls up his collar to hide it.) A spot of red on the sleeve. A rip on the left side of the fabric where his heart should be, if the reflection was alive.
But for him, where his heart is. It shouldn't be there. He doesn't need it. He doesn't want it. It's not working properly anymore.
No matter how many angry marks he leaves on his skin, his heart won't stop; it won't give up.
Maybe one day it will.
(In summer, they tell him he's beautiful and he's loved. They tell him how lucky he is to be alive and how incredibly smart and talented he is and how people envy him just like he does to others. They tell him that he's going to be okay and everything is going to be better. They tell him these things take time but everything will right itself in the end. They tell him they'll always be there. They’ll be his friends. And he's alive.
It hurts to hear. He doesn’t know them, but it still hurts, and his monster doesn't attack, even as he waits nervously, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands.
It must be tired. Maybe it's in hibernation. He's sure - it will be back. It will always come back, no matter how many times he runs away, no matter how hard they try to help him. It will always return until the day his heart finally stops.)
As long as a heart beats, as long as a heart perseveres, there is life.
He is alive, but just barely.
(The monster is alive, but just as much as he.)
end
a/n:
i'm seeing the fault in our stars tonight.
i wrote this at 11:30pm on june 10, 2014 on my phone until about 12:30am and edited it a bit at school today.