She was in deep thought, probably because she was now in trouble.
She kept unlocking and locking her phone like a ritual - it calmed her down, it soothed her.
She didn't know what she was thinking.
She was doing what others were telling her; she was trying to forget.

She realized that all of her life, she had been an escapist.
She had always been good at it, and had even made art out of it.
The countless times she'd gotten away with forgiving those who had never deserved it, the countless times she'd gotten away with hiding so as to not hurt the feelings of others, the countless times she'd gotten away from herself.

She snapped herself into focus. She seemed to drift away far too often.
Dazed, she breathed in. It was time to get back to where she was needed, in the worries of others.
She caught a glimpse of the mirror before walking out of the washroom.

"Hell, why not? It's been a while."

She looked into her reflection. It stood tall and proud. It looked mighty fine.
She had always felt calm and at ease when she looked into mirrors.

But not today.

Stepping away, her reflection started to cringe and spit at her.
Her eyes refused to look back at her. Her hair started falling.
She watched her reflection turn away from her and walk away into a place where, clearly, she did not belong. What surprised her was how much it hurt to have her own reflection ripped away from her. Without a single word, without a single sound.

She knew that she'd been neglecting it for quite some time.
She had never paid much attention to it.

"But it's my reflection. It will never leave. It can't leave because it is a part of me."
She had always told herself this.

Now, she was seeing it. Now, she was feeling it.
Her physical vessel had become disposable. Disposable to her own reflection, to her own center, to her own definition of what wholly described her. She felt it eating away at her. She watched as it grew cold and distant.

She could feel herself starting to freeze.

Weeks later, she asked her peers about what she should do. "My reflection is slipping right through my fingers. Why? Has it grown tired of me?"
She was laughed at. She was asked to simply move on and to forget about the fact that she would now look into nothing every waking moment.

Days later, she realized that the pain was not going to stop, and that there was only one thing she could do to lessen it.

She packed her bags. She threw away all the clothes that her reflection used to smile at, and she did not wait for her reflection to give a half-hearted farewell as she walked through the front door. She did not bring any mirrors with her. She refused to look into nothing.

She refused to be labelled waste without reason.