The Ghosts in My Mirror Are Still Me

The Ghosts in My Mirror Are Still Me

Genre: Poets / Psyche / Personal Essay

Style: Poetic Monologue

Some mornings, I don’t meet myself in the mirror —

I meet versions of me I thought I left behind.

They arrive quietly, standing just behind my reflection,

like foggy breath on cold glass.

They don’t speak, but they’re there.

I see them in the curl of my lip,

in the tired weight beneath my eyes.

Each one a whisper from another time.

There’s the girl who smiled too much.

Not because she was happy,

but because it was expected.

Her teeth became a wall.

She wore kindness like armor —

polite, pretty, polished.

She learned to survive through sweetness,

even when her insides ached.

People called her strong.

She called it silent.

Behind her stands the one who counted calories

like prayers she hoped would be answered.

A body shrinking felt like control

in a world that offered none.

She was lightheaded on purpose,

because pain was preferable to presence.

She thought being invisible was safety.

But even shadows have weight.

Then there’s the girl who loved recklessly,

who mistook validation for love,

apology for affection.

She poured herself into people

who never had cups —

just holes that drained her dry.

She thought giving everything

meant she’d be enough.

Instead, she vanished piece by piece.

I see the one who stopped writing, too.

Who let the pen dry

because the words no longer felt like hers.

She believed that if she stayed still enough,

the storm inside would pass.

But stillness, for her, was another form of drowning.

And then —

there’s the darkest one.

The one who stopped showing up altogether.

Who dressed, bathed, smiled,

but never arrived.

She lived with a body,

but she’d ghosted herself.

Depression, they called it.

But it felt more like absence.

Like being a phantom in her own skin.

I used to be afraid of these ghosts.

I believed healing meant erasing them.

That to be whole, I had to be new.

Fresh. Polished.

Unburdened by the weight of all I once was.

But healing, I’ve learned, is not forgetting.

It’s remembering — gently.

These ghosts are not failures.

They are fragments.

Survival snapshots.

Versions of me who coped the only way they knew how.

They are not shameful.

They are sacred.

Each one carries a lesson:

The girl who smiled taught me the cost of performative joy.

The girl who starved showed me how deeply we crave control.

The girl who gave too much revealed how precious boundaries are.

The one who stopped writing reminded me that words don’t disappear —

they wait.

And the one who vanished?

She taught me that even absence has a voice

if you listen long enough.

When I look in the mirror now,

I see not one woman —

but many.

I see scars that once ached, now soft with healing.

I see eyes that have wept, burned, laughed, endured.

I see a mouth that no longer apologizes for taking up space.

I see hands that write again.

Sometimes, the ghosts still visit.

They arrive on hard days,

or soft ones that catch me off guard.

I don’t push them away anymore.

I make them tea.

I ask them what they need.

I remind them:

We made it.

And then, quietly,

they return to the corners of the mirror.

Still present.

But no longer in control.

The mirror isn’t a judge —

it’s a window.

A place where past and present meet.

Where the self I was,

and the self I am becoming,

can breathe the same air.

Some mornings, I still flinch.

I still feel the urge to look away.

But I stay.

Because each reflection is a mosaic —

shards and light,

fractures and beauty.

The ghosts in my mirror are still me.

But I am more than them.

I am the girl who eats without guilt.

The woman who says no and means it.

The person who writes even when it’s hard.

The presence who chooses to stay —

again and again and again.

So now, when I see them,

I whisper:

“Thank you for surviving.”

And then:

“I’ve got it from here.”