Crippled

She looked at her reflection in the mirror every single day. Same old face, same old features and yet it still was different. Before, she would make-up words to describe herself, find a flaw at every corner of her face, find reasons to hate her reflection even more. It was a mixed-bag of things she was told when she grew up, by relatives, friends, lovers. Things she internalized and understood as being true. She wasn't very pretty, she wasn't /that/ attractive. She sometimes could be tolerable to the eyes and the other times unpleasant to look at. 

She could never be like these other girls, flawless models on magazines, the perfect example of beauty in real life. Foreigners or classmates or colleagues. She would never be like them. Another part of it was what her illness told her about herself. It emphasized the self-hatred, powered through her cracks and doubts to amplify the negative feelings. She didn't tell others how complicated it was for her to look at herself, for her reflection never was the same. She never could recognize her face, never could say it was "her" she was looking at. The face in front of her always was nothing but a complete stranger and one she hated at that. How could she tell people? How could she?

It wasn't the worst. Now that her face actually was injured and there was evidence for all to see, the young woman was spiraling. For now, she found it within herself to speak about it to her trusted inner circle, but even to them, she couldn't fully explain what was going on in her head. It was terrible to look at herself in the mirror, see her injured eye, see her injured mouth and look at the scars that tore apart the skin of her face. She could trace the outlines of her injury with the tip of her finger and did over the last couple of weeks, in order to get used to this change. Her fingers memorized each crease and folds of her skin, to the point that she could map her injuries on a piece of paper by now. 

Still...it devastated her. What she had always thought she was finally happened for real and she couldn't help but stare at her reflection and consider this a divine punishment for her sins. She sinned. She was alive while she should not. She was alive while others worthy of a second chance didn't get it. She was alive and wasting away and it only was logical that the one above all decided to punish her for that. Well, she believed in those lies, to try and justify why it was happening to her. Her fear and anxiety doubled down since the accident, leaving her nothing but a shell, a vulnerable creature who didn't know how to cope with what happened to her. How could she live with herself now?

Hope was lacking. Hope, which had always been a companion to her and a great source of support had deserted her and left the young woman on her own. She couldn't see her situation get better. She couldn't hear the doctors tell her that they could help with her face. Facial reconstruction existed for a reason and she was the best candidate to get surgery. She didn't want to hear that because, in her mind, it would fail. They would try and operate on her face and she would be left with even more damages than she already had. That was how things were supposed to be given her luck. Wasn't it? Of course not! Deep down, the young woman was crying tears she couldn't cry in real life. She was confused and lost and scared but couldn't voice her feelings because they simply wouldn't come out. It wasn't her in the mirror. It wasn't her at all and yet it was. She knew she would need some time to adjust to this new situation. She also knew that she wasn't alone. 

She took her strength in the people who cared about her and those who loved her. They helped her adjust to the life she was leading now and the changes she was going through. Hope wasn't gone for good, but it would require some time to come back into her life. And she would be ready for it.