Chapter One: The House of Mirrors (Part1)
1091 Words
Chapter One: The House of Mirrors
“Sometimes the only way out is through the truth we were told to forget.”
Eliana Adams sat still at her office desk, staring at her screen while the afternoon sun filtered through the half-drawn blinds. She had composed the same email four times and deleted it each time. The words weren’t wrong—they were just not hers. In truth, she didn’t know what her words were anymore. Everything that came out of her mouth felt rehearsed, borrowed, or censored. As if she were always performing for an invisible audience, waiting for someone to critique her tone or her timing.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, sharp and clear: “Eliana, why must you always overthink? Speak up. No one likes a woman who sounds unsure.”
She minimized the email window and leaned back, her spine aching. From the outside, she looked accomplished. Thirty-two, single, well-dressed in muted tones, her desk clutter-free, her inbox under control. She was a Creative Director at a well-known branding firm in Manhattan. People said she was impressive. But behind her careful exterior, Eliana was exhausted. Not the kind of exhaustion sleep could fix—but the slow-burn depletion that came from living a life shaped around other people’s expectations.
Her phone buzzed.
Mom:
> “Don’t forget your father’s birthday dinner. 6:00 PM sharp. Wear something decent, not one of your ‘independent woman’ outfits.”
Eliana’s stomach turned. It wasn’t the dinner she dreaded. It was what it represented—a ritual of performance, obedience, and control masquerading as family.
She didn’t reply. Not yet. Instead, she reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a leather-bound journal. She hadn’t written in it in weeks. Something about journaling had always felt indulgent, like a quiet rebellion. But today, she needed to remember how her own voice sounded.
She uncapped her pen and began to write:
> “I don’t know when I stopped being a daughter and became an actress. My childhood was not filled with beatings or screaming fits. No, it was much quieter. More elegant. It was a home built on image and reputation, not intimacy or honesty. Every room in that house was a mirror. I was always looking at myself through someone else’s eyes.”
---
Flashback: Eliana, Age 8
“Sit up straight, Eliana. You’re slouching again,” Margaret said without looking up from her glass of chardonnay. They were at Sunday brunch at the Fairmont Hotel, surrounded by women in pastel cardigans and men in golf blazers.
Eliana, perched at the edge of her seat, adjusted herself and whispered, “Sorry, Mom.”
“Don’t whisper. Speak like a young lady,” Margaret snapped, her red nails tapping the rim of her wine glass.
Her father, Gerald, was there but not really present. He read the sports section of the paper, only occasionally nodding to signal he was listening—though he never intervened. He was the soft fog behind Margaret’s thundercloud.
Eliana learned early that love was conditional. Praise was rare and always tied to performance. If she brought home an A, Margaret would nod, maybe pat her head lightly, as if affection could leave a bruise. But a B? That brought silence—Margaret’s sharpest weapon.
“I don’t raise average children,” she’d say.
Eliana’s brother, Julian, got a different kind of treatment. He was “the boy,” the “future man of the house.” When he left for college, the house grew colder. With him gone, Margaret’s spotlight had only one target.
---
Present Day:
The journal closed with a soft thud as Eliana heard a knock on her office door. It was Megan, her assistant.
“Hey, just a reminder—your car service is downstairs. Still good for the dinner?”
Eliana forced a smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”
She grabbed her bag and slipped the journal back into the drawer, locking it. A part of her felt like she was locking up a piece of herself.
In the car, as the skyline blurred into the suburbs, Eliana stared out the window, wondering what kind of daughter she would be tonight. The obedient one? The quiet one? The one who laughed when told to? She’d worn a navy-blue dress—conservative, wrinkle-free, non-confrontational.
When she arrived, the house greeted her with the scent of lemon polish and floral arrangements. Nothing had changed. The family portraits were still perfectly aligned along the staircase. Her mother’s favorite was the one where Eliana wore a stiff white dress and held a cello—an instrument she hadn’t touched in fifteen years. But it looked impressive.
“Eliana, darling,” Margaret called from the kitchen. “You’re just in time.”
Her mother emerged, as poised as ever, her ash-blonde hair swept into a chignon and her pearl earrings catching the chandelier’s light.
“You’ve lost weight again. Are you eating?”
Eliana nodded. “Yes, Mom.”
“Hmm. You look pale. Don’t tell me you’re still seeing that therapist?”
There it was—the dig masked as concern.
Eliana stepped around her mother. “I’m fine, really.”
Dinner was a symphony of tension. Gerald talked about stock prices. Margaret reminisced about Julian’s recent visit. No one asked Eliana about work. No one asked how she was. When she tried to speak up, her mother interrupted with a correction, a criticism, or a comparison.
She felt herself shrinking, like she always did. Her voice became quieter. Her thoughts got fuzzier. She reached for the wine glass, hoping to blur the edges.
By dessert, she felt hollow.
---
Later That Night
Back in her apartment, Eliana stripped off the navy dress like it burned her skin. She threw it onto the chair and stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom.
She didn’t recognize the woman staring back. Her eyes were tired, her shoulders hunched. A voice whispered in her mind: “You’re overreacting. Your parents love you. You’re lucky. Some people have it worse.”
She exhaled, hard. That wasn’t her voice—it was her mother’s, echoing through her mind like a haunting.
She turned away from the mirror, pulled her journal from her bag, and wrote:
> “Love shouldn’t feel like disappearing. It shouldn’t cost me my voice. I’m tired of shrinking to fit in their idea of me.
I want to remember who I was before their version of me took over.”
- Writer
