Every night, solitude banishes all the disturbing noises outside and blows away the frustrating business of an endlessly exhausting day. He gives you the comfortable time and space to lie down. In the cold, silent room where you reside, solitude helps you take off the labels that you decided to wear or were forced to put on during a scorchingly tiring day. There is only you and a rectangular mirror, sitting right in front of you under the silver light of a taciturn moon. No one scrutinizes every movement that you make. No one listens to every breath that you take. No one throws another label of judgment on your innocent face. You are alone and yourself.

 You stare numbly in the mirror while your fingers delicately pull and detach every single label from your face. One by one as your fingers remove the stickers, drops of blood gently crawl on your pale skin. The crimson red trails on your face trace back to the painful sites where the incriminating stickers used to attach to. The tingling pain feels so familiar yet as unpleasant as every other night. When your face is finally free, your fingers grab the impure coverings of your body and slowly peel them off. In a few minutes, piles of grey stickers, labels, and fabricated coverings besiege you and imprison you in a circle. You sit there and struggle to find your frail and discolored body in the mirror, fully nude and raw, over the tall piles. 

 In the silence of the room, the monstrously distressing words on the stickers scream in your head and attempt to distract you from looking at yourself in the mirror. As they fail to attract your attention to their harrowing faces, they devise another plan. The labels suddenly crawl towards the mirror and accumulate on the surface of the mirror like puzzles. You try to rescue your image, but your muscles and bones have become too weak to fight the labels off. In a blink of an eye, the vivid reflection of you in the frame of the mirror is replaced by a thick, grey picture of another you:  An agonizing collage that your parents, your friends, and the people around you made out of you. None of these words define your reflection in the mirror. Helpless tears slide down your face sinking in the dull, clotted blood. You desperately seek an answer. Who can save you now?

Your eyes glide over the words and remind you of the day that you acquired every single label. One day you had the wrong preferences and interests, so you were labeled a "weirdo," "boring," and "dumb." The other day, your body and style of clothing did not fit the beauty cast of the society, so the stickers of "fat," "ugly," and "shortie" ambushed you. If you happen to be cursed by being born a female, you realize that you have been more vulnerable to different types of viciously stabbing and degrading labels about your womanhood within the cruel eyes of the male-driven society. If masculinity is the gift bestowed upon you, then you also recognize some other vile labels in the depths of the mirror. Looking at those offensive words, you remember the day that you broke the first condition of being given the present of masculinity: expressing your emotions and asking for emotional support. The labels came after you, calling you "feminine" or "weak." You even recall the moment that the most frightening label of all, the despicable sticker of being "gay" attached right onto your face when you were too gentle or soft. You look closer and observe some other fervently furious labels produced by equally livid, righteous people who decided to slap you in the face with their divine labels, calling you a "disgrace" or  a "sinner." 

  Every corner of the covered mirror brings more shame and regret in your mind. You realize that you are never really alone. The judging words never leave. They have been nailed deeply into your body and fate. They define you from the outside. You can never run from them because your soul is imprisoned in the mold of labels. Their greyness conceals the gorgeous colors of your soul. Your soul shrieks inside and tries to show the real you, but the judgments of the stickers insulate your identity. For years, you have allowed these labels to hinder your reflection in the mirror. Your external collage is wide open for everyone to see, judge, or even manipulate. 

You scratch the surface of the mirror, rubbing your bony fingers on the coarse stickers. All the muscles in your body contract. Cold sweat drips from your forehead. Frustration seizes you. You keep pushing your fingertips on the labels harder and harder until your hand is covered in the blood of suffering and pain. You feel that you won't ever succeed: No matter how hard you try to scrape the lies that these labels tell off the mirror, they stand firmly as ever before. After numerous futile attempts, you stop. You lower your red hands and put them on your shivering laps. You close your eyes. Your eyelashes soaked in salty tears, touch against one another. The hideous stickers are gone. Nothing can torture you now. 

For hours you sit there like a rock, pondering upon the question you asked yourself. The beast on the mirror only feeds on your fear to embrace your soul and your hesitance to burn all the stickers that chase you. You take a deep breath. You open your dry eyes and clench your fist. You Punch the stickers in the face with all the power that exists within you. Thousands of pieces of glass burst in the air, cutting your old skin and knocking you down. 

 After moments of unconsciousness, you wake up and look around. The defeated labels lie haphazardly around the room, torn and weak. In the midst of the chaos in the room, you see a fulgent shard of the mirror resting on the ground. You reach towards that piece of glass with all the might left in your fatigued muscles. You grab it and move it towards your face. You look deep inside the world of the mirror and see nothing but the shining answer to your question: UOY.