Some mirrors don’t show your face.
They show the layers you’ve built to survive.
Click. Listen. Peel them away.
I look into the mirror, but it doesn’t reflect me.
It reflects a wound that breathes beneath my skin.
A scar that never healed, though I learned to hide it behind a smile.
I was a child who stayed silent while the world looked away.
A child who learned to bury its breath deeper than the heart.
A child who believed the lie:
“This is your fault…”
Since that day, I have been the architect of masks.
I lay them one over another until they become a wall.
Sometimes that wall looks like kindness.
Sometimes like strength.
Sometimes like a man who has it all.
But I know what’s beneath it.
Beneath it, I am still that boy in the corner,
waiting for someone to finally say:
“You don’t have to be silent anymore.”
I look into the mirror and see a face trying to be enough.
Behind it stands a shadow — larger than me, brighter than me.
A shadow I have known all my life.
A shadow I loved, and still love.
I grew up in its light, a light that warmed and burned at the same time.
Every step I took was the echo of steps she could no longer make.
I ran to fill her absence.
I ran believing that in doing so, my parents would see me the way they once saw her.
But that race had no finish line.
My love for the shadow was tangled with its weight.
It was my light, and it was my prison.
I learned to earn.
To prove.
To be better, faster, wiser — for her, even though she was gone.
And I longed for the gaze to rest on me, even for a heartbeat.
But it always returned to her.
Even when it was looking into my eyes.
I look into the mirror and see a man the world applauds.
On my shoulders hang medals, awards, titles.
They are bright, heavy, cold.
Each one tells a story of how desperately I wanted to prove I was worth something.
From a distance, they look like triumph.
Up close — they are chains.
Because you can become a prisoner of your own victories.
My kindness…
Yes, it is real, but it is also my escape.
I give everything to others so I won’t have to hear my own scream.
I save everyone around me so I won’t have to go down into the depths and meet that boy still waiting in the corner.
And the truth is, if I never take off these medals,
never strip away this armor of kindness,
I will never reach him.
And every road I walk
will be a road to nowhere.
Three mirrors
Three mirrors.
Three moments of looking at myself and seeing not my face, but my wound.
The boy in the corner.
The young man in the shadow.
The adult carrying the weight of medals.
Each layer kept me alive.
Each layer also kept me away from my truth.
I can spend a lifetime proving my worth… and never feel it.
But at the center, beneath all of it, there’s me.
And I am learning to stand by my own side.
Not as someone’s savior.
Not as the “enough” one.
Just as me.
Not every layer is you.
Some you put on to survive.
Peel them one by one and see what they’ve been protecting.
① Peel your first layer — Silence → Self-Forgiveness
- Find a childhood photo of yourself (from a time you felt most unseen). Sit in silence and look at it for one full minute.
- Say out loud to that child:
“It wasn’t your fault. I forgive you. I love you. I am on your side.” - Write down one sentence that moved you the most in this moment:
② Peel your second layer — The Shadow
- Think of a person in whose shadow you lived.
- List three things you did only to earn their gaze.
- Add one sentence beginning with: “Today, I choose…”
Example: “Today, I choose to see myself without comparisons.”
③ Peel your third layer — The Armor
- List all the roles you carry today.
- Mark each one: I chose it / circumstances chose it.
- Underline one role you are willing to remove today — and write what you will let in instead (e.g., calm, a boundary, rest).
I breathe lighter. I am closer to the center. I return to the mirror as myself.
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