Faith had been sitting at her vanity for nearly forty-five minutes. She just needed to sit down. To get away. She was feeling down—an emotion she was experiencing too much lately—and thought if she looked at herself, really looked at herself, something in the back of her mind would snap and everything would start making sense again. Everything would start looking up again.

So, there she sat. At first, she was fussing in the way that women do when confronted with a mirror—smoothing flyaway hairs, searching for wrinkles, widening and squinting her eyes, searching her face at all angles for evidence of aging. Then, she rested her hands in her lap, straightened her spine, and just looked at herself.

“I can’t remember the last time I smiled. Is that true? When did I last feel so happy that a smile spread across my face?” she thought, panicking. She opened her mouth and let her dazzling natural smile light up her withered face. The muscles around her mouth, unused for so long, seemed to creak and rattle as she spread her lips wider, pleasant smile lines appearing at the corners of her mouth.

It didn’t feel right, considering the circumstances, but her husband Derek, had always loved her smile. If she was going into the deep, dark prison of her mind, he would raise her chin up gently, look her in the eyes, and spread her smile wide with his thumbs. He always said, “Hm, looks like I’m going to have to do this manually” as he did it.

Her heart was wounded, and the memories of him reopened what had slowly but surely been scabbing over. She watched herself in the mirror. Her features sunk. Her eyes grew wide and wet. She sucked her lower lip in and bit it hard, lest those floodgates overflow and break down her delicate façade. She needed the comfort of him—his embrace, his presence, his ever-present stubble. She just needed him and couldn’t find him.

Why couldn’t she find him? Had five years of marriage meant nothing to him? Could those small gestures which she had interpreted as romance and love been delivered half-heartedly? Why had it been so easy for him to go? To change his phone number? Her lips curled back and her eyes narrowed. Her brow furrowed and the snarling woman looking back at her looked frightening in her ferocity. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scream at him. For prying open her locked-up heart to love, for making her feel secure in that love, for pouring acid into her open heart, obliterating her love for him and anybody else, and for leaving her, wrecked and broken with no way to pick herself back up.

What had her yoga therapist been saying in their twice-weekly private sessions? Let it go. Just let it go. Breath in the pain, expand your lungs, chest, ribs, grow big with that breath, with the pain in that breath. Let it in and let it fill you up. Then close your eyes, holding that breath in. hold it in for one more second. Then purse your lips and let it go. Let. It. Go. Let it all out. Exhale the pain, the hurt, the anger, the newfound vulnerability. Just let it all come out of you, smoothly and heated. Don’t let any of it take up space in your body, mind, heart, or soul.

As she finished exhaling, she let her eyes flutter open. She saw that the color had returned to her face and she was again composed. She felt thankful for Tati in those moments. They had been doing so much yoga together that Tati’s voice was always in her head, guiding her like a living conscience, reminding her to let things roll off of her. She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Namaste.”

But as she looked back up, she remembered how judgmental Derek had been about her yoga journey. He always said it was a waste of time and money—a rich white lady activity. And her lips momentarily pulled back in worry. Worry over the amount of money she was spending on private sessions, about what others would think about this extravagant self-indulgence, for how much it meant to her.

It meant so much to her. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered under her breath as she smiled genuinely. “It’s for me,” she said aloud, raising her voice because she was so tired of being overlooked, of not being heard.

“I matter,” she said, trying to make herself believe it. Her smile turned crooked, self-conscious. She thought this self-assertion in the mirror was half silly and half helpful. She wanted it to be whole helpful. Half nothing.

She felt tired. She said, “I matter,” louder this time, more sure of herself. Her face started to pucker and screw itself up in the weird way it always had just before the floodgates released. Derek always ssaid it was impossibly cute. She wasn’t going to cry this time.

She closed her eyes tightly, so tightly that little orbs of blue, green, and purple floated around in the darkness behind her eyelids. She crinkled up her nose. She pursed her lips closed. She closed off her face to turn off her emotions. She thought, “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.”

She opened her eyes and smoothed out the rest of her features. She let her tense body relax. The woman looking back at her was calm, composed.

She said, “I matter,” loudest of all. She brushed her hair lightly and got up, ready to face her brother and his wife with the truth about Derek and the end of their life together.