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Mirror Image

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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Get up. Come on. You know you've got to. You can't stay in bed all day, no matter how appealing that sounds. That's what depressed furs do.

And you're not depressed, are you?

Good, that's better now. Get up, get out. You can do this. You're stronger than this, stronger than him. There's nothing that can keep you here. You fought hard to get to university and you have to keep your place, have to make all of this worth it. I know there's no one to hold you accountable but you have to do it for yourself, you know you need to. This is how it goes. You get up, you do the things, you get to go back to bed at the end of the day. As long as everything gets done that needs to get done, you'll know that you're okay. As long as you can do the things, everything's okay.

It's hard though. I know your eyes don't like to go to the mirror, avoiding it at all costs. You don't even look when you're brushing your teeth, angling them away so that you don't have to think too deeply about it, not too much, not too quickly. It's easier that way, to not think, just to do, and the doing keeps you doing, day in and day out. Maybe that's all you can hope for right now and I hope that, one day, you'll understand that that's okay.

You keep the curtains closed at night, ignoring your reflection. That's okay too. It's good to have the curtains closed. It keeps the nightmares out, at least for a little longer.

It's not a mirror image, you know, what is reflected there, what you avoid. What is the truth is not reflected there. You may see dark shadows under your eyes, hair scraped back tightly or hanging around your face, not holding its old lustre, but that is not a true reflection of you. You may think that you're dead behind the eyes but that is just because you have to hold back who you truly are, if only for a little while. It's a time where you need to hunker down and to hibernate to come through the dead of winter. And you will come through, waking up again, all in good time.

This is something that takes time. Only then will the mirror show the image that you want it to, the truth of the matter, the heart of it all. And that's okay too.

You try, oh, I know. Don't ever think that you don't. I'm here, waiting for you, on the other side of the mirror, hands against the glass, trying to press through. All I want is to be on the other side, with you, just to be with you, to help you through. If I could beat on it and beat on it until I break through I would - but my body is not of your mortal realm and I cannot break such barriers.

Hold steady. Hold fast. Stay the course.

Glasses offer a blurred, distorted reflection. That's almost okay but your eyes still slide away. It's not as if you need to see that kind of reflection anyway but it's nice to know too that you still exist, that you have some kind of reflection at all. A bridge over a river shows something rippled and broken and you kind of feel like that too, no part of you staying in one place for any great length of time. You can't see your face there but there is a smudge of you, reflected in the bubbling water, streaming onward towards the ocean not so far away, atop the bridge. It may be you and it may not be you, both at the same time, and you rather like that too. It offers you some anonymity, a sense of discreetness that lifts you up too.

You need that now, I know. I'm waiting still, behind the mirror, leaning in.

I'm here.

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But you can't see me.

You're not looking for me though. You're not looking for you. You feel yourself in every aching bone, how your joints are painful, the mere act of getting out of bed difficult for you. Your eyelids are heavy, your neck is sore, you always have a headache. Even your hands throb with pain as if you have been using them for far more than you actually have, doing the bare minimum to get by, to scrape by.

There's a lot going on but you don't understand that. Later, you will. Later, you'll see how far down into the darkness he thrust you, the monster that broke your soul, the one who thought it'd be fun to torment you, to make you into a shadow of the person you once were. All of this is an act of strength on your part while he tries to sap every last little bit of strength from your soul. Why? You're never going to get an answer to that. But it's happened and now you need to move forward from it. There's only one direction to go and that is up, crossing the barrier, needing that freedom. You deserve it.

You're not afraid of the mirror. You're afraid of the monster above the surface, laughing in your face while bubbles stream from you scream, drowning you. That's not unexpected. That's normal. You know the monster is out there, waiting for you, but I'm not that monster and I'm trying to come to you, each and every day and night. The monster may be in the air while you're underwater but the fight has to be made to cross into the real world again, the world of the living and the breathing and the free. You deserve this. This is not a liberty of the right and true but something for you, not "you too".

The mirror calls and you turn away. You're not ready yet. But you can come through anytime, back to your life, back to your world. I promise.

I'm here. I'm trying my best. I'm trying to help. I know I'm not doing much but I promise you that I'm here, I'll always be here.

Your mirror image but not your heart: trust the heavens, we'll never be apart. There's a way through all of this and you will see that the mirror image of you is actually me.

The mirror never lies.

But your perception of it does.