I was about to delete the app.
My thumb hovered over the glowing icon, tired of the pings, the filters, the forced smiles. I sat among cardboard boxes — my life reduced to labeled compartments: kitchen, bathroom, memories.
The apartment echoed now. It didn’t used to. Once, there was music in the mornings. A coffee mug with “bride-to-be” written in gold still sat in the sink like a forgotten punchline. I had packed up the white dress two nights ago. The guest list? Deleted. The dreams? Postponed indefinitely.
Starting over at twenty-seven wasn’t part of the plan.
The plan had included a dog, herb garden, and Saturday morning pancakes with someone who’d stay.
But the plan unraveled three weeks ago when I found the message on his phone. “I don’t know if I’m ready,” he had written — not to me. To someone else.
He said he was confused. I said I wasn’t.
I moved out.
And now, I was sitting alone, halfway through a melting ice cream tub, about to delete the last thread of distraction when my phone buzzed again.
1 New Message
From: Unknown
Subject: Look again.
Odd.
I opened it, expecting spam or an ad.
But it wasn’t. It wasn't!
A single photo filled the screen — blurry, grainy, taken in low light. A mirror. My mirror. I knew it instantly. Oval, vintage, with a faded daisy-painted frame and a crack at the top right corner shaped like a lightning bolt.
That mirror had lived in my childhood bedroom. The last time I saw it, I was nineteen and angry at the world. I had left it behind, too painful to take with me.
Beneath the image were just seven words:
“She would be proud of you now.”
I froze where I was.
“She” could only mean my mom.
She’d passed five years ago — sudden, cruel, and too soon. Cancer doesn’t wait. It just arrives and rearranges everything.
The photo couldn’t be new. That mirror was in my dad’s attic, collecting dust.
I read the message again.
Some part of me — the part that still wanted to believe in signs — stood up.
I didn’t call ahead. I just drove.
The road home was both familiar and strange, like returning to a dream. The trees still arched over the driveway like they were trying to hold each other. The porch light was still the same warm yellow. Wind chimes danced in the breeze, the same ones Mom had picked from a flea market when I was twelve. She said they sounded like laughter.
I let myself in with the old brass key.
The house smelled like old paperbacks, cinnamon, and something harder to describe — a kind of warmth that wraps around you without asking permission.
I climbed the stairs.
My room was just as I left it. Faded posters on the wall. A chipped bookshelf. The mirror leaning against the far corner, quiet and waiting.
And there — scrawled faintly in pink lipstick in the top corner — were those same words:
She would be proud of you now.
The breath caught in my chest. My knees folded beneath me. I sat on the floor and wept.
But it wasn’t the kind of crying that empties you. It was the kind that makes space. The kind that begins to heal.
That night, I wandered into the attic. Something pulled me there — a whisper of curiosity, a tug from the past.
In the far corner, beneath a stack of high school yearbooks and dusty board games, I found it:
A box labeled in black marker: “Maybe One Day.”
Inside were notebooks, short stories, a broken fountain pen, and a yellowing envelope addressed to me in my mom’s handwriting. I didn’t open it yet. I wasn’t ready.
Instead, I pulled out one of the notebooks and read.
The stories were raw, messy — but they had heart. They reminded me of a version of myself that still believed in possibility. A girl who stayed up late inventing worlds instead of worrying about timelines.
I lit a candle, sat on the floor, and began to write.
Not for likes. Not for deadlines. Just… for me.
In the weeks that followed, I stayed.
I baked with Dad. I remembered how to laugh at bad sitcoms. I sat on the porch and let the wind chimes sing.
One morning, while scrolling through emails, something caught my eye: The Great Storytelling Challenge.
The theme? A New Beginning.
The prompt? An unexpected message changes everything. What will you do next?
I didn’t hesitate.
I opened a new document, titled it The Message in the Mirror, and I wrote the story of that night. The photo. The mirror. The words. The remembering.
Weeks later, I got a reply.
“Congratulations! Your story has been shortlisted.”
I stared at the screen, heart racing. Not because I wanted to win. But because somehow, a piece of me — long buried — had returned.
That message had changed everything.
Not just because it led me home.
But because it reminded me who I was…
And who I could still become.
React
