I Am Only a Reflection

I don’t remember when I stopped being me.

I think it happened quietly. Like everything else in my life.

Like the day I started signing his name on the electric bill instead of mine. Or when I stopped wearing perfume because he said it gave him a headache. Or when I looked in the mirror and realized I didn’t recognize the shape of my own mouth anymore.

Funny how silence reshapes you.

His name is Elias. And he’s perfect.

The kind of perfect that doesn’t blink. The kind of perfect that always knows where you’ve left your keys and why you’re crying before you do. He says the right things. He touches your back when no one’s looking. He listens when you talk—but only until your voice begins to tremble.

He always says,

“You don’t need to feel so much, Inga. That’s what I’m here for.”

And I believed him. Until I didn’t.

It started with the mirror in the hallway. The thin one—cheap glass, no frame. The one I used to check my lipstick before dinner. One night, I noticed a crack. A tiny hairline fracture, right across the mouth. My mouth.

When I told Elias, he smiled too widely and said,

“Mirrors are funny like that. They break where we’re weakest.”

And then he kissed me. And I felt nothing.

Time got strange after that.

I began to misplace entire days.

I’d find receipts for places I hadn’t visited.

Books on the nightstand I had never read.

A glass of wine I didn't remember pouring, half-drunk.

The TV playing interviews of people I swear I once knew.

I asked Elias, once, if I had been sick.

He took my face in his hands, kissed my forehead like a priest, and whispered,

“You just needed rest. I’m taking care of everything. You always ask too many questions when you’re tired.”

I stopped asking.

The dreams began soon after.

Not nightmares—echoes.

In them, I was floating above myself, watching a woman with my name speak like me, dress like me, but not me.

She wore red lipstick. I haven’t worn red in years.

She laughed too loud. She read poetry. She locked the bathroom door.

I started locking the bathroom door.

One day I found a notebook in the attic.

Not mine. Hers.

The woman in the mirror.

The first page was dated six months before I met Elias.

The last page was blank except for a single sentence, written in red ink:

"I am not who he says I am."

I confronted him that night.

I asked him who I was. Who I really was.

He said:

“You’re better now.”

“You were lost when I met you.”

“You were nothing until I gave you shape.”

“Everything you are now—you owe to me.”

I laughed. For the first time in months, I laughed.

It sounded like her.

That night, I stared into the cracked mirror for hours.

And for the first time, I saw her.

Not me. Her.

She had my face—but not my eyes. Hers were wide open. And angry.

She whispered,

“He doesn’t love you. He loves control.”

Elias is gone now.

Maybe I left him.

Maybe she did.

Sometimes I forget which one of us is driving.

But I remember this:

The mirror doesn’t lie.

Only he did.