The Mirror
When I look in the mirror, I don’t see me; I see who I used to be.
A little lost girl who was so abused and so misused,
so ashamed of who she was, so helpless and so selfless.
Yet somehow, she refused to give in...refused to give up on life.
Even though she tried.
She used her books to take her wherever she wanted to be,
away from all the hurt, all the suffering, all the sadness, all the misery.
She could become the person she aspired to be in that book.
It was her story. She was the glory.
She had to be that person in her book.
Because real life was off the hook.
The shero was not what she saw when she looked in the mirror.
She was no shero. She was not indomitable.
She did not know how life would go.
A lost little girl is what she would see,
the person she did not want to be.
It was out of her grasp.
Instead, she had to gasp for air so that she could breathe another day,
so that she could live another hour,
so that she could move away from the pain and the strife,
so that the sadness of life would not make her cower
from the madness so rife.
In her real-life story, would she continue to be the victim,
or would she emerge victoriously?
It’s time to stop being controlled,
to stop seeking to be consoled,
and to step into the role of her own destination,
move away from the chaos and strife,
make her way in life, make her mark, walk her stride.
Will she ever be able to look in the mirror
and see a true reflection of who she has become...
not a deflection of who she was?
Will she see the woman that has emerged
from the pain and the hurt
and instead see the swarthy girl,
a pearl that was the result?
It’s time to look to someone higher than me.
I can’t do it by myself.
The valley is too deep to crawl out of,
too deep to dig out of,
too deep to shovel out of by myself.
I felt I had no one,
no one who could console my sadness,
who would not add to the madness,
who understood my weakness,
who would not exploit my meekness.
No one that truly understood me.
That did not mean I had no one.
Feeling alone is only a feeling...it is not necessarily reality.
Yet those feelings can leave you reeling,
pulling you in and out of sadness, darkness, and loneliness.
The truth is, there were always ones right by my side.
But my sadness had built a veil,
blinding me to their presence, their comfort, their love.
And once I lifted that veil, I saw...I was never truly alone. I was always surrounded by quiet warriors of love.
Copyright © Krishika Upadhyay | Year Posted 2025
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