She looks in the mirror after brushing her teeth, it’s impossible to avoid. There in her bathroom is a large glossy mirror that reflects everything.

She couldn’t avoid it today. Not after last night. She knew she probably wouldn’t like whatever she saw, but all she could think about was what happened.

__

‘I’m so sorry’

She opened the first message.

Ugh, I should’ve put my phone down while I had the chance she thought to herself. She watched the little dots in the chat warning her that something terrible was coming next; you can’t follow up that message with something good. She watched those little dots as they threatened to ruin her night.

There it was.

‘I lied to you, I told her everything’.

No. No no no no. That’s all she could think. There was no explanation necessary, she knew exactly what had happened by those two messages. She didn’t even care when she saw all the ‘I’m so sorry’ and ‘I realize I was wrong’ texts coming in.

‘Goodnight’ was all she could manage to write back.

She laid down to close her eyes and try to sleep, but sleeping seemed like a far fetched fantasy now that she realized what was going on. The guilt was enough to get her up out of bed.

The first thought she had was that she needed to say something, but a text didn’t feel right; she knew it had to be a letter. This is probably so stupid she thought, but she couldn’t fathom not saying anything and she was tired of talking.

Texting seemed impersonal and she knew the message would be seen too soon, she didn’t want to anticipate a reply, and if she had to explain herself in person one more time she was going to lose it; a letter was all she had.

I’m sorry, and I know that might not sound convincing but it won’t happen again. I’m sorry for passing judgement and speaking before thinking, I’m sorry for not coming to you when I had a problem. I won’t do that anymore. I should’ve spoken to you and should’ve spoken against you in a moment of anger. I’m also sorry if this seems dramatic or weird, but I had to say something, I’m wrong and I know it.

Writing it out made her feel stupid. She worried her friend would think it was a heavy and dramatic reaction, but she was tired of losing friends to little petty ‘he said she said’ arguments. She was tired of having messages passed from person to person, every move only making things worse.

The need to say something was too strong to wait. The guilt of knowing that she’s messed up had finally spilled over the edge, avoiding it wasn’t the move tonight.

Once she slipped the apology under her friend’s door sleep came much easier.

__

A few hours later and she’s forcing herself to look in the mirror, forced to see everything. There’s no smile on her face, there’s no frown either, she’s about as close to expressionless as it gets.

She notices her pores first, details that are hardly noticeable in pictures, the things you only really see in a person right in front of you, but almost never notice.

Then she sees every pimple and mark that stands out from her skin. When did I get all these little bumps she thinks. She sees the red marks on her skin from where she’s unknowingly picked at them.

The next thing she notices are her eyes, the light brown far too innocent to recognize itself.

Brushing a hand through her hair she watches as her fingers just barely get covered by its short darkness. The hair is shaved on both sides, she does it herself, and looking this hard she can see the cut is slightly uneven.

Now all she can think about are the flaws that she can’t avoid anymore.

There’s a scar right next to her right eyebrow, old stitches from an accident when she was four. Then she sees the scar on her lip right above the lip ring, the remains of a dumb bet that ended in a trip to the hospital, and eleven more stitches. The last visible scar she can find is in the center of her forehead, this was just from a few months ago, a night gone completely wild and much more her fault then the rest.

Then she looks back in her eyes and sees one more thing. It’s the guilt, the guilt of knowing better. The pain she feels knowing that she only hurts because she did something wrong this time. It wasn’t some freak accident, it was her actions that caused this one. She’d much rather take a few stitches to the face again then see this.

So she goes to her computer to write one more thing.

She’s tired of talking and she really has no where else to go, that’s how she ends up writing this.