The Girl in My Mirror

An epitome of grace and beauty she isn’t. Everything about her is awkward – from her gait to her nervous babbling. She stands there, with all her pride and a poor posture, staring at nothing in particular, a vacant expression on her face, lost in the wastelands of her own thoughts.

At first glance, she might strike you as a little slow. But if you look closely enough, you might even hear the cogs in her brain turning, slowly but surely. You’d see the slight furrow of her eyebrows, or the narrowing of her dark eyes. You’d see her gnawing the inside of her cheeks or biting her disproportionate lips. You’d see the slight tilt of her head as she battles with her thoughts.

Her cheeks look a little too heavy for her face, curving downwards gently – chipmunk cheeks, one may even call them – turning ruddy at the slightest hint of embarrassment. Her lips are varying shades of pink, a soft gradient visible from her thin upper lip to her slightly fuller lower lip, lips that seem to be stretched into a hard line perpetually. But when she does smile a genuine smile, it lights up her entire face. A softly rounded nose accompanied by dark honey eyes and scarce eyebrows arching like the subtle curve of a leaf, all her features making her plain at best.

She carries more weight than she probably should, the awareness of which leaves her feeling uncomfortable in her own skin; skin layered with complexes and diffidence. With stumps of dysfunctional legs, she waddles around, her stride akin to that of a penguin. Every step of hers screams awkwardness, tripping over her own feet with each clumsily misplaced and severely misjudged step. She is blissfully unaware of her surroundings. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that she is a hazard to herself.

If she were an animal, she’d be a cat. Except for their grace, elegance and holier-than-thou attitude, she has it all. That is to say that she is probably capable of murder but is too lazy to actually do it and is low-key; a jerk. Also, let’s not forget how spectacularly dumb she can be at the same time as being somewhat smart. Proficient in sarcasm, you won’t get a straight answer out of her if you catch her in what she likes to call her ‘fun mood’ (not likely to be fun for others though).

She is attracted to the most random things – the way a colour looks against another colour, how one random object fits into another random object perfectly, the texture of paper or the symmetry of an object. Small things, small gestures can make her happy, but small things and small gestures can also make her sad. A sensitive person she is for sure, but she does not like showing it. And being the fairly introverted being she is, she’ll take her time to figure out someone before making herself vulnerable to them. She is a person of extremes, more often that not unless indifference comes into play.

She is a mystery, even to herself. A walking, talking contradiction. A bizarre mixture of self-assurance and insecurities, of pride and self-doubt, of surety and paranoia. Every day is a war waged against herself. And every day is a surprise of which part of herself triumphs.

She too has her demons but is hesitant in revealing them. Brush strokes have gone wrong on her canvas, but those imperfections have made her the person she is today. An epitome of grace and beauty she isn’t, but she sure is a work of art.