loved me, staring right back at him.
When did you last look at yourself?
I used to think the cruelest thing Max ever said to me was “No one would ever date you.”
It wasn’t.
The cruelest thing he did was teach me to look at myself through his eyes. For eighteen months, every time I looked in a mirror, I saw a woman who wasn’t enough. I saw what he took away.
It took a woodshop teacher, a sleeve of crackers, and three weeks of carving to teach me something different.
A mirror doesn’t show you what you’re worth.
It only shows you what you’re looking for.
Now, when I look, I look for the right things.
And when I forget, which I still do sometimes, there’s a little maple mirror on my nightstand to remind me.
Look again.
He does.
So do I.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated
