I’m going to take my face off today.
I stood in front of the mirror, staring at her, no me; but it was her too, always her. My mother’s face, etched onto mine like a cruel joke. I hate how every feature screamed her name louder than mine. If I could just change it and carve away the parts that didn’t belong, then I would look like me right?
Dear diary, I picked up the blade; silly me! My hands were shaking, but my anger wasn’t. I pressed it against my cheek and for a moment, I thought I could do it, peel away the parts of me that looked like her, scrape away the woman I was terrified of becoming.
The first cut wasn’t deep, but it stung enough to bring tears from my eyes. Blood trickled down, warm and red, and with it came the truth I couldn’t escape. No matter how many scars I tried to create, her face would always live beneath them.
All I could do was cry at this point. Not just from the pain, but from the fear. The fear that I was destined to become her. That her mistakes, her coldness, her bitterness would seep through my skin and consume me. I thought I could change my face, but how do you change your fate?
I don’t know why I’m writing this down. Maybe because it’s the only way I feel like I exist outside of her shadow. Maybe because I’m tired of pretending everything’s okay when it’s not.
I don’t want to be her, Diary. I don’t want to carry her pain, her regrets, her brokenness. But when I look in the mirror, all I see is her staring back, and it feels like I’m trapped in a body that isn’t mine.
Tonight, I learned that I can’t bleed her out of me. But I don’t know how to live with her reflection staring back, either.
Maybe one day, I’ll figure it out. Maybe one day, I’ll look in the mirror and see someone worth loving.
But right now, I just feel lost.
love~tootie
For years the mirror was my enemy. It stared back with the weight of generations, a surface too honest and too raw. I avoided it; not out of vanity but out of fear. Fear of seeing her. The one whose words cut deeper than I ever admitted. The one whose likeness haunted my own. My mother, the woman who carried me in her broken womb.
I hated how I looked, not because of the angles or the curves, but because they were hers. The fullness of my cheeks and the curve of my nose. Even the slope of my brow was all a reflection of the woman who gave me life but left scars too deep for me to carry without trembling. So, I avoided the mirror. I avoided seeing me.
Four years ago, I began a journey. Not of perfection, but of reclamation. Layer by layer I stripped away what wasn’t mine. The burdens of her pain, her doubts, her insecurities. I peeled them back one at a time. I stood before the mirror trembling. I was vulnerable, then I began to see. Not her. But me.
It wasn’t easy. The process of loving myself was a war of whispers and screams, of silence and sobs. With every tear shed, I reclaimed a piece of my reflection. The face I saw was no longer a shadow of my mother but the light of a woman finding her purpose. The woman staring back was strong, flawed, radiant. She was me. I am her.
Now I see beauty, not in the way the world defines it but in the way my soul does. Beauty in the journey, in the resilience, in the power of loving what I once despised. I see the courage it took to strip away the layers and the strength it takes to stand in my truth. I see a woman destined to teach, to heal, to guide others on their own path of self-discovery.
Before I opened my diary that night, I sat in silence, lost in the arguments I’ve been having with myself for years. It’s always the same fight: her voice in my head, my voice trying to scream over it. I keep imagining a conversation with her, the things I’d say if I could. Sometimes, I wonder if she’d even care if I told her how much I hate being her reflection. Or maybe she’d just laugh the way she does to deflect. I’ve had so many mental conversations with myself. The conversation between mother and daughter. went like this: