10/05/2025
I sat on the edge of my creaking bed, the same way I had every night for the past year, staring blankly at the flickering bulb above. The room I lived in was nearly bare—just this rickety bed, a dusty table I barely used, and a crooked mirror hanging on the wall like it was tired of reflecting my failures.
"Life is unfair," I muttered. "Nothing ever works out for me."
I said that a lot—like a ritual. A bitter kind of prayer. I blamed everything and everyone: my parents for not doing more, Nigeria for being broken, even God for being too silent. But never once did I blame myself. Never once did I ask, What part did I play?
That night was different.
I stood to wash my face. The cracked mirror caught my eye, and I paused. Something was off. My reflection—it wasn't moving the way I moved. It looked me dead in the eye, steady, knowing.
Then it spoke.
"Don’t complain about your life," it said, calm but sharp, "when you are the one who is handling it."
My heart almost stopped.
"What?" I whispered.
"You say life is hard, but you hit snooze ten times every morning. You claim you’re stuck, yet you never commit to anything for more than a week. You ask for open doors, yet ignore the small ones already cracked open."
I stepped back, trembling. This had to be a dream. Or madness.
"You complain," the mirror said again, "but you're the one holding the wheel. You just pretend you're not."
The light above me blinked once, then went out.
That night I didn't sleep well. But in the morning, I didn’t press snooze. I got up. I made a plan. I pulled out my old laptop, opened half-written stories, and started writing again. I signed up on freelancing sites. I failed the first few times. But I didn’t stop.
The mirror never spoke again. But I didn’t need it to.
Because the words stayed with me—echoing in the silence:
“Don’t complain about your life when you are the one who is handling it.”
