The Mirror Lied, I was always becoming

”Even broken mirrors reflect light”. A whole glass mirror shattered to pieces, and here I am, picking them up. It’s funny time feels faster than I can think but somehow also painfully slow. Time is an illusion. Sometimes I feel stuck, other times like I’m moving through a blur. Out of all the pieces the mirror has shattered into–I can’t count the exact number, I only have twenty in my hands [representing the twenty years of my life].

Some pieces I chose maybe deliberately, maybe not. Some have cut me, others, I used to admire, to stare into. But I never knew exactly what I was looking at. My soul? My face? The truth is this has never been about a mirror. It’s about the twenty stages the twenty versions of myself that I’ve passed through so far.

When I was a baby, I was an egg, pure, blank, and unaware. That era can’t even be recalled. From age one to ten, I was in what I’d call my “larvae” stage. I felt things deeply but didn’t know how to express them. I stayed in the shadows because the light felt too loud. Even then, I was a big child, but my size didn’t bother me. I embraced it warmly. Childhood is its own kind of oblivion. You don’t look at your face or body in the mirror and think, “I hate this”, you just are. Friendships were fleeting, but I still constantly felt left out. People might say, “What do you know? You were just a child.” But I knew pain, I just didn’t know what to call it.

Then came the teenage years, the pupa stage. And these years? They cut. Not always in obvious ways, but in quiet, scarring ones. That’s when I began to see myself clearly not just in mirrors but through the eyes of others. My body changed quickly. People had opinions about it. At thirteen, I realized the world had assigned shame to my size. “Orobo,” they’d say, like it was my name. And suddenly, I was expected to feel bad about something I was previously unaware of. They told me I had to be the best. But being first never really mattered to me I just wanted to pass, to laugh, to enjoy life in small ways. Watching Tom and Jerry while pulling my socks off  after school, that was peace! 

But somewhere along the line, things shifted. Achievement became currency. Sibling rivalries turned into silent battles for validation. It wasn’t just about getting chocolate anymore it was about who got praised and who got ignored.

At sixteen, I got into  trouble for standing up for myself. I was told to figure out my future, to become an adult. I stood in front of a massive university gate, being warned not to let boys touch me, only to hear those same boys say I wasn’t desirable enough anyway. “You don’t dress sexy”, “You’re big, not beautiful”. Fine, I thought. At least I’m smart. Maybe I could shine through that. But even intelligence felt like a competition I didn’t sign up for. 

Everyone came from somewhere, thinking they had to be better than the next person.

Then I woke up but not from sleep. I was wide awake, walking to the gym, finally putting my phone away. Social media had been feeding me lies that I wasn’t enough, that I should isolate myself, that there was only one right way to be.

Now at twenty,

Crossing the road to the stadium, I realized that I have grown. Maybe not in the ways I expected, but in real, deep ways. I ran home and found pieces of myself everywhere clothes that no longer fit, boundaries I’ve recently set, and people I no longer chase because I’ve stopped being a people pleaser.

The gym isn’t a punishment anymore. It’s not a place I go to fix myself or to meet an unrealistic standard. It’s where I go to breathe. For once, I’m not doing it to satisfy someone else’s view of what my body should be.

Now I’ve set boundaries. And it turns out, not everyone likes the new me. That’s fine. Because I do.

Growth doesn’t always show up when we demand it to. Sometimes it’s quiet, slow, internal. I used to wonder how we grow. I thought it had to be loud, dramatic but really, it’s in the subtle changes. My hands are bigger. My heart is lighter. I don’t need my mum to hold my hand while crossing Lagos traffic anymore. I navigate it myself.

Yes, I’m still in the pupa stage. Still not completely excited about adulthood. Still figuring things out. Surely, even if I try to resist it, I will still become. The illusion was never that I wasn’t growing, it was that I thought I needed to see it for it to be real. And so, I continue, picking up the pieces of my mirror of myself not to rebuild who I was, but to discover who I’m becoming. 

Writer’s Note:

This piece is a personal reflection on the quiet, non-linear process of growing up as a Nigerian Muslim woman navigating identity, body image, and self-worth. Using the metaphor of a shattered mirror, I explore the internal metamorphosis that often goes unseen the one that happens slowly, painfully, beautifully, and honestly.