I stood in a store, where hundreds of people would walk past me every day, and every day with out fail everyone stopped or at least glanced at me to look at themselves. They’d fix their hair or straighten their glasses. They’d suck in their stomachs or wipe off some dirt on the leg of their pants. Their reactions to seeing themselves ranged from ecstatic to mortified. Everyone had a different opinion on the subject of themself.

Then one day, a family of three took me home. The mother, and father were both in their twenties. The child, a girl, well she had just been born. They put me in her room, and I watched her grow. I was with her when she was either silent or crying with no in between. I watched her through her terrible two’s, when everything made her laugh. I watched her go through fazes of pink poofy dresses for every occasion to wearing whatever allowed her the most movement.

She stood infront of me when she was just nine, locking eyes with herself, memorizing her times tables till she could recite them proudly without error. I watched her find her friends, and realize what loss felt like. I watched how her parents grew older and wiser. I was there with her when she became a sibling, and then the eldest of five. I watched her rich, red hair grow from waves in a bob to thick, and long down her back. Though her emerald green eyes never changed, those always stayed the same.

I saw her put that dammed scale just below me, that she’d stand on every morning, crying, and sobbing, just quiet enough that her family could not hear. I heard her swear up, and down that she was ugly, and disgusting. Even though I swear she was pretty, but even if I had the voice to tell her so, she would not believe me.

She got up at the crack of dawn every day, be it rain or snow to go on a run. She hid with me in her room from her family, her friends, her life, the world. But our time together was not pleasant, much less enjoyable for her, and for me. She would sit at the edge of her bed with dull, burnt out eyes staring at me, daydreaming she was anyone but herself.

She’d stand infront of me like she did when she was little but these times she was undressed, and instead of multiplication she was memorizing her flaws and imperfections. No one else saw what she, and I saw since she hid herself in baggy clothes. In front of me she kept her hair up in a bun, on the back of her head. But then when she left her room, her hair was down concealing her face, and her neck line that she despised.

She would obsess over her body, pick out every little thing wrong with what she saw in me, her mirror. She hated herself but I hated her more. I envied her, and still do because at least she has a body to be ashamed of, a life to live, a family to love. At least she gets to obsess over the little things in life. While I only get to obsess over being seen.

She’ll turn me around, face me to the wall, complain about how she can’t deal with the sight of herself any more but at least she has the sight of her self. All I have is me, the thoughts of an object who was never meant to be seen. I’d switch places with her in a heartbeat, and now after watching the perspective she has on her life, I’m sure she would like to switch places me.

I envy her because of her life, because she’s human through, and through. She’s learned from her mistakes, and she’s been able to watch herself grow. She’s able to run, to walk, to sleep. She can talk to people, real people, while I’m forced to talk to myself.

I’ll never know what my voice sounds like. I’ll never know what I look like. I’ll never be able to smell flowers, freshly cut or delicious baked goods, not even a wet dog. I’ll never feel the sun on my back or cold water rushing up against my skin as I cannonball into a pool. But she does, she gets to experience it all. Every single thing I want she has. I’d love to be able to hate my body because that would mean I’d have a body to hate. I would invite beauty standards, and expectations in with open arms because it would mean I would not be invisible anymore.

I will only ever be the thoughts of a mirror, the bridge between reality and people’s perception of what is real. There is no escape from this, this torture, this fragment of a life. I am a soul without skin, a brain without a body. I show people who they are, without ever really knowing me.