The Girl In The Mirror by Ke'Zhiah

The Girl In The Mirror by Ke'Zhiah - July 2023 Scholarship Essay

There she is, staring at me. That girl in the mirror. As I lean closely forward, I see that she is laughing at me. She knows that I am unsure of what I am seeing. She senses my disgust of my soul being held captive in this disfigured and filthy vessel. I back away from the mirror dumbfounded, and she immediately stops laughing. The silence begins to talk to her. She begins to hear all of my insecurities, fears, sins, heartache, hardships, and cries. I feel her energy that's full of intensifying sympathy and condolences. Somehow she knows I’ve been begging someone to give my soul the key to get out. And yet, I still don’t know who I am looking at as I feel she knows exactly who I am.
Going through school, I felt so insecure about myself, beginning in middle school. Despite being one of the top students in my class, I was constantly misused and abused by “friends” that understood the power of my intelligence. Whereas I was naive and just wanted to help my friends to reach the level of success that I attained through hard work, dedication, and a clear focus on my education. Over time, though many kind-hearted acts to help my “friends” self improved, I realized my “friends” had a pattern of asking me for help and advice concerning academic or personal matters but never returned the favor and never extended friendship past school. My “friends” would allow me to sit at the lunch table with them to keep me on a friendship leash as they would plan for fun group activities that did not include me. Matters got worse when I realized that I could not take it anymore and decided to isolate myself from this particular group of people. In this act of self-preservation, my friends no longer reached out to me as they once did, increasing my heartache. That moment clearly established that those so-called friends did not care about me. As I got to high school, I began to learn more about my worth and the importance of being content with being alone. I realized I would rather learn to love myself than try to please and seek the love of others that did not serve me. During high school, I continued to press on to achieve academic greatness by taking advanced placement and dual enrollment classes as early as freshman year. By the time I reached the end of junior year, I was burnt out from all the coursework, extracurricular activities, and volunteer hours I put into school. However, I couldn’t stop going to tend to my exhaustion. I still had to work diligently to get into my dream school, Spelman College.
After completing my first year at Spelman College, I realized I had fallen short by failing to maintain high academic status from not prioritizing my mental health due to caring for the same overworking habits and insecurities as before, along with new transitional challenges. From not knowing my worth to allowing others to abuse my kindness, overworking myself to hide from the pain, not paying attention to my body, and not addressing the problem's actual route problem all kept me from succeeding. By G-d’s Grace, I was able to build the strength to get myself out of this whirlpool of gloom as I began to take the time to analyze my educational journey. Journaling was the key to freedom that helped me be honest with myself and develop strategies to put my mental health first before I return to school this upcoming fall.
In considering the distress that I have endured, I know that I am not the only one to experience the trials and tribulations that the neglection of mental health brings upon a person. Because of this, I aspire to create a self-love, self-care, and confidence brand to help and educate youth all across the globe on how to adequately cater to themselves using the life lessons I learned along the way. Although I am pursuing to become a policy counsel and advocacy lawyer as a second-year double major in Political Science and Economics, I plan to have a business and a few nonprofits someday. In my leadership roles, I will implement mental health days, journal and self-care packages, and breaks within the day for spiritual rejuvenation or meditation to help others look beyond what they see in the mirror to keep pressing on. Looking over my educational journey, I have no regrets about my performance or what happened to me. It all happened for a divine reason and shaped me into who I am today. Furthermore, it allowed the renewed and evolved me to build up the courage to look at the hurt girl in the mirror to let her know that better days are ahead.