Breaking Out | (Un)Broken

words by Liah Chung and Agnes Cho

Breaking Out by Liah Chung

To pop or not to pop. That is the question. Patience, my mom always says, is a virtue. But looking at the red, swollen, almost white polka dot just under my hairline, I decide to take the chance. Position. Tense. Push. Suddenly, a short spurt of yellow pus streams out, like some grossly-fermented, highly-bacterial toothpaste. I keep pushing, digging my fingers even deeper, waiting for the blood to follow, but nothing else comes out. Only a lingering, watery pus trails down my forehead. In the mirror, I am a tragic sight—splotchy, still dotted, and now engraved with the crescents of my fingernails. I have spent the past 30 minutes clawing at my face, desperately hunting the monsters in my head. As I think about the approaching school day, my face reddens with shame. The only thing worse than being seen with pimples is showing that you care about them. 

Unfortunately, you can’t call out of work just because there’s a flaming volcano leaking into your eyebrow. You can’t get your mom to understand that acne is a valid, entirely-understandable reason for a sick day. You can’t tell the attendance office that your self-esteem is so low that you can’t walk around in public with another reason to hate yourself, which is what the sign(s) on my forehead is currently saying. You can’t say that you already have thick thighs and giant glasses and greasy hair, and a pimple is the last straw on this dying, anti-depressed camel’s back. I laugh, thinking about how crazy I sound. No one is giving me any excuses today. 

So I go to school and then I come home, spending the day with my head down and my eyes closed, desperately trying to avoid the reality of my ugliness. It’s just another day of high school. 

Brushing my teeth that night, I can’t help but notice how paradoxically I see myself. From every angle in the mirror, I find some new blight on my body. Yet oddly, just as much as I hate looking at my reflection, I also seek it out, in every shiny, vaguely glittering medium. I am constantly checking my appearance in every reflective surface—car windows, raindrops, a passing bus, other people’s dark yet deeply transparent eyes. I want to see myself, but at the same time I know to be deeply afraid of it. 

Sometimes I feel like looking in the mirror is like getting hit by a bus. Like you’re in the middle of the road just minding your own business, picking up some trash, shepherding some baby geese like the good samaritan you are, chewing on your fingernails, thinking about your upcoming Spanish test and the underwear you hope you didn’t leave on the middle of your bed for your roommate to see and then BOOM. Lights flash. Tires screech. For a split second, brown eyes meet brown eyes. Black hair matches black hair. And then it’s dark, and I can’t see anything. I’ve run myself over. I’d run myself to the ground to escape this world. 

I’ve stopped brushing. My toothbrush hums, idle, splashing spit and water and germs across the room. I want to shatter it all: my phone, the mirror, the water, the car windows, the raindrops, the buses, the glass eyes of other people. I want to punch my fist into them and watch my hand bleed. I want to burn the demons in me, telling me that I’m not enough. I want to smash the funhouse mirrors and watch my skin, finally in the light, heal while I cut the scars out of my heart. I want to fill these aching holes with the person I want to be and the way I want to see myself. 

My hand leaves my swollen forehead. It reaches to open the medicine cabinet, then pauses, and finds the light switch instead. 

In the dark, I know that scars aren’t fixed with more cuts; they need time. Demons can’t be hunted with fire; they need love. Not all pimples are ready to be popped. I put a hand to my cheek, invisible now to me but still a terrain I know all too well. Patience is a virtue. I think about how hard my body works every single day to keep me alive. I can walk and run. I can sing and see. I can laugh and love, have and hold. Every day, I breathe in and out. That’s beautiful. I’m beautiful, I say. I don’t think I believe myself, at least not yet. But I’m working on it. 

Learning to appreciate yourself is a hard, uphill battle. It takes years and years of loving and being loved. The progress we make isn’t linear, but it comes with giving ourselves patience and grace and choosing, every single day, to keep on going. To break out or to break out? The answer: I can do both, simultaneously.

(Un)Broken by Agnes Cho

When I was three, I looked at the mirror and laughed. What a funny little creature I was! With small, squishy fingers and hair that seemed to have been licked by a cow. Small almond eyes that had yet to discover the world was so much larger than my mother’s gaze.

When I was six, I looked at the mirror and cried. My fingertips callused from playing the piano for hours. My tears streaking my cheeks like dew. I wanted the world to know I was strong, and yet I was the shortest and weakest amongst my peers. Over time, music became my shield against the bullets of the world. My calluses became my proud battle scars, but my mind fell victim to the enemy I called my heart. And as much as I tried to suffocate it, it only screamed louder.

When I was 11, I looked at the mirror and smiled. A smile that deep down I knew was a fake. I smiled in the face of mistakes that felt like knives to my identity. As if my soul was made of porcelain. Engraved with scratches from every time I picked at my own imperfections. Growing more and more fragile by the minute. I smiled in the face of hurt. I smiled in the face of laughter. I smiled at both pain and joy till they became indistinguishable to me.

When I was 17, I looked at the mirror and saw its shattered pieces on the floor. I peered down at its sharp edges. Carefully traced my hands across its thin and thick edges. Picked each piece up one by one, and desperately gathered them, so as not to lose what I was most familiar with: brokenness.

Now I am 20, and I look at the mirror and see all of its beauty. It’s worn down edges of the mirror frame, and the shattered glass glued back together with cheap superglue. Perfect in its imperfections. I remember that the most exquisite mosaics were made of broken pieces. Each piece of glass measuring up to be something far greater than what it thought it would be.