Looking In The Mirror (standard:drama, 1277 words)
Author: Lori	Added: May 12 2004	Views/Reads: 3599/2247	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Re-worked it to the best of my ability. I've done everything I know to do with it. If you see something else, please send me some feeback. Tell me what you think needs to be changed. Thanks Kel for believing in me! You're an amazing teacher!

Looking In The Mirror 

By: cowgirl_11 

It's been revised in the hope you can understand it better. Maybe one
day you too can face the demons in your mirror. 
________________________________________________________________ 

Every morning while brushing my teeth, I look in the mirror wondering
who the person is looking back at me. I see myself and think, “How did 
I get here, what roads or journeys brought me to this point in my 
life?” If there was a smooth road, I never found it! So it happens, as 
I said, I wake up and BAM! I don't recognize my reflection; I have no 
idea who SHE is. 

I'm not the person I was ten years ago. Hell, I'm not the person I was
last week. I change every day, whether I want to or not. I go to sleep 
thinking “Hey I'm Lori!” I wake up and I think, “Who is this person? 
What happened last night? Where did I go?” 

Life changes I know this. I expect it to get better. Most of the time
life gets worse before it gets better. It might not be fun, but life 
should stay the same. That way I'd know what to expect. 

I can remember being younger, being outgoing and fun. Now I'm just
another housewife. Nothing has meaning, except my children. For them, I 
would take a million days like today! 

I'm a child of abuse. My cousin and two neighbors sexually abused me. I
don't like thinking about it, it's one demon I haven't wanted to face. 
If I face it, I have to feel it. I'm not strong enough, this will 
change one day. 

I was emotional and physical abused by my father figure, can't count the
times I went to school covered in bruises. No one could see them; we 
wouldn't have been the perfect family. I can't remember what they were 
for, can only remember that it's hard to be perfect when you're a 
child. 

On my fourteenth birthday, a boy I liked and respected, raped me. I
couldn't like him after that. He saw me at my weakest point, he saw me 
cry, “saw” the real me that day. He became someone to hide in fear 
from. I was afraid of everything that could hurt me. 

I didn't know that something happens to virgins, thinking I wasn't one
in the first place. {Girls are until they start their period the first 
time.} I asked my mother to go to the store; she wanted to know why. I 
told her I started my period, which she knew was a lie. I had ended my 
cycle the week before. I had to tell her the truth. She was the only 
one to know for a long time. 

My stepfather doesn't know what happened. I don't want trouble; one man
lives down the street from him. Daddy would kill them if he knew. I'm 
who I am because of these things. What doesn't kill me makes me 
stronger, as the old saying goes. 

I married the first man who came along; he says I forced him into it. I
wasn't that in my mind. It was more; if he loves me, he'll marry me. If 
he marries me, he won't leave me. Everyone else in my life had, I 
didn't want to happen again. I had family, but there was no one there 
for me. No one to love me for being me, not for the things I could give 
them. 

After six years of abuse he left me for another woman. It's been ten
years since our divorce. He's not the same man I loved. I'm happy that 
he's out of my life. I miss the happy person I thought I was with him. 
It's funny how the mind will pay little tricks on you like that. I 
thought we were the happiest married couple in the world, until the day 
he said he's in love with someone else. That's a day I'll never forget. 


He kidnapped our children once; those were the longest six months of my
life. I became someone I'm not proud of, someone I wish I could forget. 
I became an alcoholic, a sex object for any man that would have me. The 
worst kind of person you can imagine, that was me. It was punishment 


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