I Am You, You are Me

“You betrayed me.” 

I tried to control the waves of anger breaking over me. I stared at her in utter hatred, my brain barely registering the taste of blood on my lips.

“You were the only one I trusted.” my hoarse whisper seemed foreign to me, like the voice of one long dead.

She said nothing.

I could feel the anger coming like an old and bitter friend. I wondered how long I could hold it back. My fists clenched into tight balls, my knuckles bloodless.

“You were always so proud, you held your head so high…but for what?” I spat the words like so much venom. “You have nothing to be proud of. Nothing to call your own, no one to love you. You are…empty. And you are to blame. People tried to love you but you betrayed them, you hurt them, you destroyed them. Your cold heart froze every hand held out to help you. You were never meant to be loved.”

The anger in my heart spewed over into my words. I wanted to hurt her like she had hurt me. I wanted her to feel what I felt, suffer as I suffered. But she didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“You are nothing to me now,” my whisper had grown into a harsh growl, “No one, to anyone. You are lower than the street scum you so willingly sneer at.” As the sun lowered over the horizon my voice rose in anger and intensity. “You could have been everything but you failed! You failed me! You failed the world.”

I stopped suddenly and dropped my voice to a low but vehement whisper. “I hate you.”

I stared into her unblinking eyes for an answer, a retaliation, equal hatred, something, anything. Something to show me she was evil, something to prove she was a heartless backstabber. I gazed into those deep blue eyes of ice and what I saw shocked me. It wasn’t hate, it wasn’t anger, it wasn’t cruelty.

It was pain.

A pain I had never seen before. A deep, choking hurt that took my breath away.

She was suffering too. The realization slapped me across the face with a brutal sting. She wasn’t evil. She was afraid, and hurting. Something deep inside of me broke in that moment of realization. Maybe it was the little bit of heart I had left, I don’t know but in that moment I saw a girl that needed to be loved. Desperately.

I timidly stepped forward and reached out to draw her into my embrace, but my hand was stopped by something cold and hard. My eyes became wide as I suddenly remembered where I was. 

Standing alone, in front of a mirror.

My entire body slackened as I slid to the floor. And there, in a crumpled heap, I wept.