The Mirror Lied, I Didn't

The mirror never told me the truth. It showed a girl too round, too plain, too uncertain. Every morning, I stood in front of it like it was a judge, hoping for a different verdict, and every time, it betrayed me. The mirror, with its glassy silence, always seemed louder than the world. But I kept showing up, trying to rewrite the story it reflected.

At fifteen, I first started believing the mirror more than myself. A friend made a careless comment about my thighs during gym class, and suddenly, I saw them everywhere — stretching across photos, overflowing in jeans, rubbing together in summer heat. That one comment, paired with the mirror’s quiet confirmation, etched itself into my self-image like an ink stain I couldn't scrub away.

My confidence became conditional. Smiles were filtered through insecurity. Compliments were deflected with awkward laughs. My worth became a puzzle I tried to solve with makeup, diets, and social media filters. The mirror was my proof that I wasn’t enough. And every time I believed it, a small part of me dimmed.

But the truth is, I never lied. Not once.

Not when I said I was tired — because fighting invisible wars in your mind takes all your strength.

Not when I said “I’m okay” — because sometimes, that was the closest I could get to explaining the chaos inside.

And not when I started writing — pouring pages full of truths I wasn’t ready to speak aloud.

Journaling became my rebellion. My notebook didn’t reflect me — it accepted me. I’d write about the way my chest tightened when I walked into a room, certain everyone was watching. I wrote about feeling like a background character in my own life. I wrote about the nights I cried silently because I didn’t want to be a burden. Those pages held truths the mirror couldn’t contain.

One entry still haunts me — or maybe it saved me.

“I think I’m disappearing. People don’t see me. Or maybe I’m just fading into whatever the mirror says I am.”

That was the day I realized something powerful: the mirror doesn’t know my heart. It doesn’t feel the way I light up when I talk about books or the way I hold back tears during sad movie scenes. It doesn't remember the time I held my friend as she grieved, or the way I stayed up all night helping my sister study. The mirror only knows surfaces, not stories.

So I started fighting back.

I unfollowed the influencers who made me feel like a glitch in beauty’s algorithm. I began taking selfies from angles I used to avoid, smiling not because I looked perfect — but because I was present. I replaced the word “ugly” with “human” and let that be enough. I even stuck a yellow post-it on the mirror that said: “This is not the truth. You are.”

It didn’t change overnight. Healing never does. But each time I chose to believe my journal over my reflection, I reclaimed a piece of myself. I realized that mirrors lie because they’re limited. They can't see the way your eyes glow when you talk about your dreams. They don’t register courage or resilience. They miss the quiet victories — like getting out of bed when anxiety tells you not to, or forgiving someone who didn’t say sorry.

Now, I see my reflection as a suggestion, not a sentence.

On the outside, I haven’t changed much. But on the inside, I’ve built a home where I belong — even when the world (or the mirror) says otherwise. I speak kinder to myself. I catch the lies when they come, and I hold them up to the light of everything I know I’ve survived. The mirror might still whisper doubts, but I’ve learned to answer back with truth.

Because I didn’t lie.

I was hurting.

I was unsure.

I was healing.

But I never stopped telling the truth — not in my writing, not in my silence, and definitely not in my becoming.