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who IS that?

This was the question I asked myself tonight as I looked in the mirror. I'm having a lot of mirror experiences lately, and I don't know why.

 In the mirror I looked at my oval face, topped with a crazy yet aesthetically pleasing blonde bun. I looked at how my eyes had grown bigger and my mouth and nose were in proportion at last, and I looked at the blemishes and acne scars that pepper my face. And I thought, is this real? Who IS that?

 I remembered looking in the mirror as a young teenager. Back then I was really skinny, and my face was still growing, as was my opinion of it, so I thought my nose was too big and my mouth was too wide, and my forehead was too tall, and my hair was really long and always greasy. But I didn't care all that much because what I looked like didn't matter a lot to me.
What I looked in the mirror and thought was, why don't I have any friends? I'm so lonely... 
Truly.
There was that time.

 And today an almost-19-year-old looked out of the mirror at me and I thought, is this real? Because now I'm past that. Then I felt awkward no matter what I said or did. Then I didn't think I was hardworking or very smart or all that special, and certainly not likable or pretty. I'm not saying I've completely gotten past all of those things--I do have days when I still struggle--I'm doing so much better. I don't feel awkward all the time anymore. I can even make friends now...

 (I honestly really, really, really struggle to write about this and put good words on it.)

 Tonight when I saw my mirror, I felt like Lucy looking in the magic mirror in the Wizard's book in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and how she saw sort of a Lucy-Susan person and she was so beautiful she just wanted to be her. That's kinda how I felt tonight. I looked at that almost-19-year-old and for a moment, my mind snapped back to who I was when I was 13, and I just wanted, with my whole soul, to be her. I wanted my hair to do that perfectly messy bun thing. I wanted my face to be a nice oval. I even wanted the acne (trust me, I actually did want acne when I was a kid). And then I realized I was her. And I don't know what I think about that. 

 I guess that's something to celebrate, question mark? It's just weird to me to think I'm that person. I thought it would feel different to be this old. It's so different from all the times I've visualized being this age. I guess from that perspective, this looked all fresh and new and stuff, so that's how I thought it would be, but it really feels rather ordinary, haha. Nothing incredible.

 So as I looked at myself tonight and thought about the person I grew out of, I wished I could speak to her. I wished I could speak to that little girl who continuously said, "I'm so lonely.... I'm so lonely..." just to tell her that it doesn't last. She grew out of it. And she grew out of so much more. She grew into her skin. I wish I could have told her that one day her hair would sit in a perfect messy bun on the top of her head, and her eyes would stare out of her oval face peppered with blemishes and acne scars, and behind that face would be a girl who knew she was loved, knew she had friends, knew she could do hard things, and was really going somewhere.

 Maybe not everything I hoped to be back then.
Maybe not everything I could be.
Maybe not everything, even, that I should be.
Definitely not the person I want to be.

 But absolutely better than I was before.

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