Chapter 3 — The Faceless Reflection

Today I tried to do something ordinary.

Look at myself in the mirror.
Not to fix my appearance or check if I looked “okay.”
I just wanted to look.

I tried to hold my gaze, to silently ask myself how I’m doing, what I’m doing, who I am.
I thought maybe, just by looking, I’d understand something.
Nothing happened.
And at the same time, I felt everything.

Because what I saw… wasn’t me.
Or at least, not someone I could recognize.

They say looking at yourself in the mirror can be a moment of connection.
A spiritual ritual of sorts.
Some say they cry, or feel clarity, or find themselves in that quiet gaze.
I saw nothing.

No light, no shadow.
Just a still image that looked like me, but held no story.
A silent version of whoever I once was.

And that made me uncomfortable.
Because if something this simple can be so deep for others,
why does it feel hollow to me?

I woke up in the early hours.
Although… “woke up” is a lie.
I wasn’t sleeping.

I was just there, lying still,
breathing as if the night had thorns.
Thinking about small things that feel impossible:
sleeping without noise in my head,
feeling okay without reason,
recognizing myself in the mirror without fear.

I went back to the bathroom.
The light was dim. The silence, thick.
And there it was again: that face without a story.

I forced myself to look at it for more than a few seconds.
Forced myself to ask, softly, if I was okay.
There was no answer.
But I felt something strange—
a mix of discomfort and tenderness.
Like when you run into an old friend you barely remember,
but something inside you knows you once loved them.

Sometimes I feel like I’m renting this body.
That it tolerates me, but doesn’t quite belong to me.

And that hurts, too.

It hurts not to be able to do what should be simple.
It hurts not knowing if the mirror is reflecting you, or hiding you.

I have no answers.
No revelations came this time.
Just a clumsy attempt to find myself where I no longer am.

But I’m writing this anyway.
In case someone else ever feels this way.
In case you, the one reading this, ever looked and saw nothing too.

Maybe we’re meant to see ourselves little by little.
In pieces.
With pauses.
With fear.

Today, the mirror didn’t return a face.
But it did return a question:

What if I never truly get