He had hurt me. It was all I could think about. His blue eyes stared at the dirty carpet, avoiding my gaze. He was either intrigued by the muddy brown color or was avoiding the inevitable. I wanted to scream at him, ask him why, and tell him it was a mistake.

“I’m sorry, this hurts me also,” he muttered before leaving. My tear streaked face stared at the door, he had left, he had actually ended it. Brushing the tears away from my face I got up from my bed and looked in the mirror. My eyes had turned unusually green, rather than their usual hazel color. Every time I cry, I thought.

“It will get better, it takes time, guys are a**holes,” Jamie promised me that night over a bag of Reese’s Pieces. I just nodded. The hugs and countless pieces of chocolate I ate helped but still didn’t make me feel better.

“Come out with us tonight, it will help you forget about him.” Jamie almost begged me that next morning. I just shrugged. I had gone almost mute since the conversation with him the night before. When he left my room the night before he had taken a small part of me and my voice with him. My friends were fighting for me to find it again.

When I looked in my reflection that night, the empty eyes were as strange to me as the girl in the mirror. Heavy eyeliner and eye shadow, all the pimples hidden, she looked like a new person, someone who had not just had a piece of her taken by some jerk of a guy. I still didn’t recognize who was in the mirror. I didn’t want to be this stranger. I wanted to be in my bed, hurting still, crying into my pillow. My friends wouldn’t let me.

“Sulking is for the weak,” Jamie argued with me earlier, as she held up a tight black mini skirt of a tighter and shorter gold dress. She wanted me to wear those. She said it would make me feel better. I had just stared at her like she was crazy. Now, two hours later I had put on the black mini skirt, not sure whether I had done it to appease her whining or make myself feel better. Either way, I did feel a bit better.

After one or two shots of vodka my head began to buzz and I started to get excited about a girls night out. Must be the alcohol talking, I swore to myself. Inside I did not want to enjoy tonight. The buzzing grew louder as the four of us trekked off campus, Goosebumps popping up on our bare, pale arms. You didn’t bring jackets to the parties. The chances of losing them were too great. The only thing keeping us warm was the vodka. The music was pulsing before we even got inside.

At the door the muscular, typical fraternity boy gave us the up and down before letting us out of the cold. I could tell what he was thinking. It wasn’t how I wanted to be seen. Why had I let my friends talked me into this?

“Can I get you a drink?” a deep voice asked from behind as I felt a hand loop around my small waist. Either it was the vodka kicking in or I was genuinely having fun, I highly doubted that though, but I said yes. When he asked me to dance a little while later I said yes. When my friends asked if I was good and if they could leave, I said yes.
Four drinks later when he asked if I wanted to see his room, I said yes.

Later that night when I was throwing up, dressed in one of his t-shirts, my hair a tangled mess I was saying no. I said no to everything that had happened that night, starting with my stupid decision to agree to wear that black mini skirt and that eye shadow. I should have listened to the girl behind the reflection. The girl who wanted to go climb back in bed in sweatpants and a oversized sweatshirt that reminded her of him, and eat Nutella while watching Psych.

I had known that girl behind the reflection, the logical, thoughtful and reasonable girl. I had been that girl. Before everything happened. I had been able to think straight and say no to my friends, the easiest people to say no to. Instead I had said yes to everything that night, causing me more pain than I had felt in a long time. I felt ashamed at the girl in the reflection I saw now.

The smudged eyeliner, eye shadow, disheveled hair and a t-shirt that I would clearly never wear was a constant reminder of my mistakes that night. I tried to wipe away the make up, fix the hair, but nothing could fix the damage that had been done. I tried to find that girl I used to know in the mirror, but the only thing staring back at me was the reflection of a broken girl with poor judgment who thought that becoming someone she wasn’t would fix everything.