I let out an unsteady laugh, and choke on the bitter tears that follow.

The girl in the mirror laughs as well, but her laugh is twisted and savage and ugly. She cries the way I cry - with silent, shaking shoulders and a scrunched up face. Neither of us cry loudly, or dramatically.

I recognise the look in her eyes, the deadened hopelessness that makes her look older somehow. She has rings under her eyes and her mouth is stretched thin; her lips are smothered in red lipstick in an effort to bring colour and life to her face. It just looks like blood is spilling out of her mouth as she deteriorates inside.

I know that look. I've seen this look before, in other people. I've seen people with this look, and I've said 'goodbye, I'll see you tomorrow' to them, and then they haven't come back tomorrow.

I know that look.

The girl in the mirror stops her crying and stands still, staring at me as if I'm some unknown specimen. "You look tired," she says in a voice so similar to my own.

I stare at her sad, sad eyes and ask, "What are you thinking about right now?"

She blinks, and her skin seems to dull even further. She looks ashen, like a dead girl walking. She's a suicidal one, that girl in the mirror. She chews on her thin ruby lips and focuses her gaze just over my shoulder and then she says, "I'm not suicidal."

"I believe you," I say. I don't though, not really.

"What are you thinking about?" She dares to ask.

"You," I say quietly,and then I start crying again. "I'm thinking about how ridiculous this all is. I'm thinking about how pathetic we both are. I'm thinking that my thighs hurt and that I'm lonely and that is stupid and I should be doing something with my life instead of standing her crying." I wipe at my eyes vehemently. "I hate crying."

The girl in the mirror is crying again too, but hers are tears of frustration and exhaustion. She still has that look in her eyes. "I feel heavy," she admits though her tears.

I know that. I do. I feel heavy too.

There's a weight in my chest, like a boulder is sitting there, and it stops me from breathing properly. It saps my energy, that boulder, and it holds me down in my bed some days. Sometimes I want it to crush me completely, just so it'll be gone. Sometimes I want to heave it away and live.

Most of the time, though, I just can't breathe right.

"I hate you," the girl in the mirror whispers, and then she starts laughing wickedly. The boulder gets a little heavier, and the girl in the mirror starts shuddering as hot tears overcome her once more.

I cry as well, stuck in this endless loop of laughing and crying and laughing and crying. Every breath makes that boulder heavier and today I want it to crush me. I want it to get so heavy that I can't bear it anymore and it squashes my heart into a million pieces.

It doesn't, and I cry hard enough to gag on the lack of oxygen.

I'm teetering on the edge of precipice. It'd be so easy, wouldn't it, to just walk away and let the boulder crush me. It'd be so easy to let the girl in the mirror talk to me to my grave.

"I hate you," the girl says again, but this time it doesn't hurt as much.

Im fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

But I'm not, am I? No matter how many times I repeat it, the boulder still sits in my chest, and I still can't breathe right, and there's still a consuming, choking feeling in my throat. My thighs hurt, they hurt real bad, but it isn't enough. I need...

I don't need to hurt myself. I don't. It's just that my skin feels like it's pulled too tight over my bones, and I feel itchy. "How do you explain to someone," I rasp to the girl in the mirror, "that your mind is talking circles around itself? How do you tell them that your thoughts are tangled up, and you want everyone to understand, but you know they won't, so you try and unravel the knot but you can't do it and-"

The girl in the mirror raises a trembling hand to her painted mouth and I stop talking abruptly. She's shaking, but not because she's crying. She's shaking because she's cold, and she's lonely, and because she can't make sense of her own thoughts either.

"You don't tell them," she says.

I shake my head. "But I have to explain why I keep going on tangents where the thoughts and the words never end. I have to tell them that sometimes I don't want to think, and that I'm sorry but I just can't stop the thoughts because I think they're normal but they're not. I just want them to know that I want someone to rip the thoughts straight from my head just so I can stop for a second."

"You don't tell them," the girl says again, and this time, I believe her.

My tears have stopped, and so have hers, and now we stare at each other in silence. Her thin, stained lips are smeared slightly, and her eyes are still dull and grey, but there's something...something just beneath her skin.

"I love you," I breathe suddenly, and my voice is all sorts of messed up but I know the girl understands. She stares back at me with wide eyes. "I love you so much."

The burning tightness in my throat stops burning.

The girl says, "How?"

I say, "I love you, because nobody else has loved you properly." She's a sad girl, that girl in the mirror, but she's a lovely girl. She's a girl who hasn't been loved the way she deserves to be loved because other people don't give love the way they're supposed to. It's not her fault. "I love you," I say again, stronger this time, and the girl in the mirror starts crying again.

I start crying again.

Because we're one and the same, the girl and me. We have the same hair, the same dull, grey eyes, the same tiredness to our souls. We both have boulders in our chests. We both hate to love ourselves, and love to hate ourselves.

We're one and the same, the girl and me.

We're one and the same, the girl and me.

We're one and the same.

"I love you." Three simple words that nobody's said properly before, because love isn't all about loving someone else. You can't love someone else until you love yourself first. "I love you."

"You can't," the girl says with a broken voice.

"I can," I say, "and I do."

I love you.

I love you.