Your outer image is all that matters.

That's what she drilled into her brain everyday, looking in the mirror.

She hated her eyes. If the right people looked at them, they would notice.

A smile she could fake, pretend she was happy. Her eyes stayed sad; she tried to light them up to make them appear happier, but she couldn't. Not that anyone could tell, or maybe they just didn't care. She was once told her eyes were kissed by the moon. She disagreed.

The moon was beautiful, the way it was shown in the dark, and the sun's light glowed off of it. Her eyes weren't beautiful because they showed the truth. How she actually felt.

She hid it well.

But no matter how hard she tried to hide it, it was her eyes, the way they looked broken.

Not everyone could tell. Almost no one could tell. But she knew, no matter how well she hid it, she always knew how she felt, underneath all the effort she put into being perfectly fine. She would always know she wasn't fine.

And that's what destroyed her every day, the fact that she wasn't fine, no matter how hard she tried.

An outer image is all that matters. As long as you look flawlessly perfect.

But then people don't understand what happens underneath that exterior, the shell she created to hide herself, protect herself.

She was good at faking it, good at being fine.

But she wasn't.

See,

Some damage is just a bit too deep to repair.

The repeated phrases burned into her brain, haunting her.

She's ungrateful

She'll never achieve her goals

She's a mistake

She's always wrong

She's always the one to blame

She doesn't try

She's selfish

She's a disappointment

She always fails

She's a failure as a daughter

She will fail in life

She is the problem.

She's the reason they aren't happy

She's the reason they don't love her

All summed up to a common a point that she had been told so many times

She's not good enough

That's what was drilled into her brain, no one ever told her it wasn't true.

And she tries, she tries so hard to be everything they want from her.

But they don't notice her efforts, to them she will never be good enough.

And she believed it, she believed she wasn't enough, would never be enough, no matter how hard she tried

And she wanted to be happy, she wanted so bad to be happy, to be loved.

To be enough

But she never felt like she was enough

That's why she has her scars physically and mentally.