The Way We Mend | AifiHwa

(1) The mirror's reflection

The morning sun peered through the heavy curtains, casting a gentle glow across my room. As the rays warmed and shifting towards my face, I mumbled and bury deeper into the blanket. I had been snoozing my alarm repeatedly and it just gave up. I opened my eyes and trying to focus my blurred vision. With a heavy sigh I reluctantly sat up, my luggage still untouched.

"Another restless night".

My mind clouded with the weight of the day ahead, it felt suffocating. The thoughts of dragging myself to get up and be ready for class leaving me feeling overwhelmed and powerless. I wished that semester break was longer.

Dragging myself out of bed felt like peeling away from gravity itself. I caught my reflection in the mirror on the bedroom wall and paused. The person staring back looked vaguely familiar, almost like a sketch of who I used to be.

My lustrous wavy black hair now resembled a lion's mane, wild and unkempt. I really need a new hair conditioner; the humid environment made it worst. The dark smudges beneath my brown eyes had become permanent fixtures, like bruises of exhaustion I couldn't hide anymore. My pale skin, stark against my dark hair, glowed ghostly in the morning light - a contrast people often called "ethereal." I called it corpse-like. Cold weather turned me into a walking ghost, and summer was no kinder; the sun burned me at the slightest touch.

As part of my daily ritual, I practiced myself to smile at the mirror. The distant memory of a smile that was effortlessly bright, genuine and alive is practically gone. What was left behind is a stretched and hollow smile. I reached out and pressed my fingertips against the glass, tracing the outline of my reflection. Somewhere behind that fragile surface was the girl I used to be - the one who carried courage in her chest and a spark of life in her eyes. But she felt frangible now, like a sand caught between fingers.

I took my towel and walked down the familiar hallway. On my way to the common bathroom, the living hall was dark and one of my housemates, Evangeline Brooks was rustling through her papers with serious face.

"Oh Valeri, you have class today?", Eva peek through her notes while adjusting her glasses.

" Yea, 2 classes", I lean on the wall while answering. "You pull an all-nighter again?"

"Heh..heh.. The life of a master student, you better make a good life choices", Eva snickers while stretching herself.

"It's your own choices and open the curtains! It's freaking gloomy in here. How the hell do you study in the dark. Your glasses can be a magnifying glass."

Abigail, Eva half-sister draws the blackout curtain and letting the sunlight in. She continued to nagged Eva about making a mess in the living hall with all her notes and papers and empty mugs. Evangeline hissed and complaint to Abigail for ruining her 'thinking lair'.

A quiet snicker escaped me as I made my way toward the common bathroom. The house I lived in was one of the university's managed residences. It had four-bedrooms, a modest living hall, a small kitchen, and one big, shared bathroom. The bathroom itself was functional, lined with four shower stalls and an equal number of toilets. The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, and the faint scent of soap and shampoo hung in the air. I slipped into one of the stalls and let the warm water run over me, washing away the remnants of sleep and whatever fragments of melancholy still clung to my skin.

I dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans, nothing fancy. Comfort mattered more than aesthetics today. Still, I tugged my oversized hoodie on my waist; the amphitheatre was always freezing, and I had no plans to turn into a popsicle halfway through the lecture.

I swung my bag over my shoulder, checked my reflection one last time and reached for my lip balm. A swipe of pastel peach on my lips and a line of eyeliner, small efforts to look alive or at least like I hadn't wrestled with my thoughts all night. The effect was minimal, but it helped.