Through Borrowed Eyes

She was beautiful,but cruelty stole her eyes,until she could no longer seethe masterpiece she was made to be.

The mirror hadn’t changed,nor had the face staring back at her.But somewhere between the cruel remarksand the careless words of others,she had learned to see herselfthrough eyes that had never loved her.

The things she once adoredbecame the very things she wished to erase.She began finding flawsin places she had once found beauty,counting imperfectionsshe had never noticed before.

Until her reflection becamea collection of everythingshe had been told was wrong with her.

And slowly,the voices of othersbegan to sound like her own.

Their words made a home in her mind,and before she knew it,she was repeating to herselfthe very thingsthat had once broken her heart.

She no longer needed anyoneto tell her she wasn’t beautiful.She had learned to do thatall by herself.

And isn’t it tragic?

She was craving for the world to love her,while her heart was quietly breaking,longing for the loveonly she could give herself.

She searched for affectionin the eyes of strangers,hoping to find a reflectionkind enough to call beautiful.

She waited for complimentslike flowers wait for rain,hoping that perhapsa few kind wordscould make something bloomin the places cruelty had left barren.

But how heartbreaking it isto stand before a mirrorand wait for someone elseto tell you what you are allowed to see.

To need a stranger’s admirationbefore you can admire yourself.

To wait for someone’s approvalbefore you believethat you, too,are worthy of love.

For perhaps the cruelest thingthat can happen to a personis not being unloved by the world,but being convincedthat they must first be loved by the worldbefore they can love themselves.

And so she waited.

For someone to call her beautiful.For someone to noticethe things she had learned to hate.For someone to look at herwith enough tendernessto make her believeshe deserved some of her own.

She kept asking the worldto give her somethingher own hearthad been begging her for.

And the saddest part?

She had not always hated herself.

There was a timewhen her reflection felt like home,when she could look in the mirrorwithout searching for something to fix,when her beauty did not needa witness to be real.

But somewhere along the way,she handed strangers the mirror,and believed every distorted imagethey held up before her.

She was beautiful.She had always been beautiful.

But she had spent so longlooking at herself through borrowed eyesthat she forgotshe had eyes of her own.