My mirror has legs and a laugh

The concept of our ‘inner child’ is familiar to most of us. They exist as a concept, fuelled by tiktok trends centred at healing your inner child. They exist at a distance, locked away in our memory and haunting the halls of our memory until we swipe them away when it hurts too much.

My inner child lives externally. She pushed apart my ribs and stepped out of my chest and now she resides in my little sister. She’s no longer a ghost. She has a laugh of her own and eyes that sparkle and skin that’s warm to touch. I hug her often, and my heart aches every time.

My little sister is only 10 and jealously stains my bones. She manifests the ‘what ifs’ that swarm my brain like bees, buzzing so loudly I hear nothing but the past.

It’s pathetic, but I can’t help but ache for the little girl inside me that curls up in my belly and hopes I ignore her. The girl I see when I look at my sweet sister.

My little sister is the age I was when my parents split. The age I was when I sat in the back of my best friend’s car watching my mum cry in the arms of her friend and wondering what it was I wasn’t quite understanding.

When I look at her, I realise how little I was. The smattering of freckles that the sun has kissed her with this summer reminds me of myself. My freckles still appear in the summer. A trace of that little girl that ghosts my face once a year, a promise that she’s still here, even if I locked her far away. She stays with me in the hope that I’ll let her run again.

made using shuffles

I’m jealous of the laugh my sister carries, and the confidence she has. Her parents are still together. Her bond with her mum remains, unmarred by the cracks of a parental dispute that stained our relationship and closed my chest around my heart. The scab has healed but the flesh is tender and forever changed, marred skin glistening with its fragility.

My sister is often told how similar she is to my brother. They’re both giggly and clumsy. They both tan in the sun where I burn, and they’d both rather play sports than read a book. I’m the odd one out, the sore thumb, and I wonder often how I got to be that way. The uptight older sister who doesn’t quite know how to join in with their jokes. The older sister who misses out on the fond smiles from our stepmother because she’s too serious, too rigid. My sister has less fun with me, and I wonder sometimes if it’s because I can’t bear to look too closely into the little mirror that chases me around the garden.

She looks just like the girl I was, but I know I’m the ony one who sees it. I wonder if my dad remembers the little girl I used to be whenever he sees his youngest daughter laughing or reading a book. I wonder if he’s become too disillusioned by the woman I am now to remember the girl I was. I remember her and I mourn her.

My sister is the sun. She kisses my skin and warms my heart but it hurts if I stare too long.

I often wonder about the trope of the eldest daughter, the pressure to be strong and stoic and allergic to failure. Did my parents ever expect that from me or was that the precedent I set for myself? I don’t remember a conscious decision to be cold or unaffectionate, allowing space for my younger, more sensitive brother, who everyone adores. I just fell in and couldn’t claw my way out in time to stop the dirt getting under my nails. Now it seeps into my skin and turns my blood black.

Maybe if I had been born second, I would be the sibling my sister is more similar to. I would be the funny one, the one she always knows she can play with, instead of the one she comes to for a cuddle, for comfort.

“Freya and I are the only ones who never let her down.”

My sister always comes to me or her mum for comfort. Because we’re pillars.

If only they realised how close I was to crumbling. There was no foundation to begin with.

I think have a distorted sense of self. At least, who I think I am is not who my parents think I am, and honestly I don’t know who’s correct. The mirror is clouded with doubt and memory and I want to scrub at the glass.

I’m harsh, prickly, sarcastic, even cold. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve at all. In fact, I think I usually leave it behind in my jewellery box. I’m not very fun, or even very funny, and I was the age of 30 by the time I turned 10.

Inside, though, I’m the little girl my sister still is and I see her every time I look in the mirror of my younger sibling. The girl inside me that’s crawled into the space behind my ribs in the hopes that I’ll one day let her laugh again.

To everyone she meets, my little sister is my brother’s mini-me, but to me she’s the reincarnation of the girl I once was who knew how to laugh and get grass stains on her knees and lick ice cream from where it dripped on her hand.

I mourn my younger self and the fact that my little sister will never meet her. They’ll never get to play badminton together in the garden or play snakes and ladders at the kitchen table. They’ll never make banana bread together and use hair chalk to turn their matching brown hair pink. I think my sister would have liked her even more than the big sister she loves.

I’m sick with grief and it tightens my chest every time I look into my sister’s big brown eyes and lament the loss of everything I was and the girl I never got to be. She’s looking at me with a smile and has no idea how sick it makes me.

My stomach churns with the burden of time and knowledge. I’m grieving the future and what it might look like. I fear the time in my sister’s life where she leaves her younger self to rot and becomes harder, sharpening her edges before anyone cuts her.

If I could form the words, I’d warn her, but instead I watch on, waiting for time to put a curse on her. I wonder if her inner child will live in her belly like mine does. I wonder if she’ll one day have a daughter who reminds her of everything she used to be.

Figure, Colin Page