Don't chase the rabbit...?
You are shown a memory from a few years ago. A 13 year-old girl stands in front of her dingy bathroom mirror. Her hair is long, down to halfway down her shoulder blades. She’s wearing make up, she has no piercings in her lip or ears, there’s even some make-up around her eyes. But that makeup was running down her cheeks as she just…stared at her own reflection.
She thought she had made herself look perfect…but even then, she wasn’t good enough. She was ashamed with herself…she was not the kind of person she liked anymore…that face in the mirror was not what she wanted, it was what he wanted. She gripped at the sides of the mirror and glared at herself now, baring her teeth and angrily rubbing away her tears.
“FUCK HIM!" She screamed, grabbing a washcloth and roughly scrubbing off every trace of makeup on her face. She ran her long hair under the sink and grabbed a pair of scissors from the medicine cabinet, aimlessly cutting at the dripping locks and watching them fall into the sink in clumps. When she finished, she stared on for a while with an unreadable expression. It wasn’t quite right yet…she looked better, but something was still missing.
Her mom wasn’t home, so she snuck into her room and found the sewing kit and a pair of stud earrings. She took some ice and a wedge of lemon from the kitchen and returned to the bathroom, making quick work of piercing her own ears. When she had finished, she just stared for a while, the faintest of smiles crossing her lips as she looked at a face she was happy with for the first time in a long while.