She is eleven years old, when she is first called pretty. She's laughing at a joke one of her best friends made when suddenly a girl she rarely talks to comes up to her and tells her she's pretty. It comes as a shock, really because even after staring at her face in the mirror for almost 10 minutes everyday, she does not think her looks are worth being appreciated. Her brains, yes, her ability to crack jokes, maybe but definitely and she says this with conviction, not her looks. Her response comes a few seconds later than it normally should but she manages a small smile and mumbles a shaky 'Thank you'.

When she reaches home that day, she locks herself up in the bathroom for an hour. The cracked mirror is in front of her and she analyses each and every minute detail of her face, wondering what someone would find even remotely pretty about hollow cheeks, an ashen, almost sickly pallor and dark circles ringing woeful eyes. Her mother's call for lunch is ignored deftly and she curls up on the bed, drifting into a restless sleep. And just like that, she skips a meal for the second time in her life.

She is fifteen years old, when a boy in her class shyly admits to having a crush on her. By now, she has long since forgotten the compliment that came four years back and it is nothing but a dim memory now, a 'When did that happen?' moment that she has to furrow her brows and try extremely hard to remember. It rarely ever crosses her mind and for that she is slightly thankful.

The gossip about this new development spreads like wildfire and suddenly, she is teased and giggled at for making most of the boys in her class fall in love with her. Her classroom starts feeling claustrophobic and underneath the jovial laughter, she can sense the simmering envy emanating from practically every girl in her class.

She is rather confused and unable to comprehend the events unfolding in her life. Granted, she is still as skinny as always and has prominent high cheekbones that most people consider to be the hallmark of beauty but she is not like other girls, with their sparkling eyes and glowing skin that taunt her every time she glances at them.

That day she spends two hours in front of the shiny new mirror, tracing the razor sharp, angular indentations of her gaunt face and applies concealer for the first time in her life to hide the claw marks that surfaced a few hours back from crying too hard. She wraps her arms around her small, skeleton-like frame and sobs her heart out for everything that could have been. Lunch, need I say it, is skipped, just like dinner- a meal she is slowly realizing is adding on to her increasing weight (not really, the figures appearing on the weighing machine are too less for her age but her inescapable demons continue to haunt her.)

She is nineteen years old, when she is first called beautiful. It is a passing comment, one uttered by her dorm-mate on the first day of college. She is going over the course structure and material for her chosen subjects when those fateful words are directed at her. Her hand freezes mid-air, the page still half turned. A sense of deja vu erupts inside her and she quells those thoughts, giving a large, albeit quivering, smile and a seemingly genuine 'Thank you.'

"You must be used to it," her roommate says, a playful smirk making its way to her face. She rolls her eyes and sticks out her tongue, amazed at her acting and the nonchalance she manages to portray. A few seconds later, her roommate is out of the door and her facade crumbles. Her face contorts in pain and she clenches and unclenches her fist to control herself. She slowly walks to the full length mirror in the corner of the room, swaying slightly from its position due to the cool breeze entering the room through the window. A trembling hand steadies it and she stares into the mirror, much like she did all those years ago and has continued to do ever since.

Her face is scary, not pretty or beautiful and if she looks closely, she can see a small amount of fat that needs to go (which, of course, is non-existent but when have her eyes, her almond-shaped eyes, ever seen otherwise?)

The baggy t-shirt that she chose on purpose, hides, skillfully her ridiculously miniature waist and the rib bones that jut out against her pale stretch of skin. It hides the purple bruises and the red marks that her fingers made from pinching the flesh to fully feel the presence of the fat lingering there (which, of course, is not true. She is nothing more than a patchwork of bones with a film of skin stretched tightly over it but when have her fingers, her long, bony fingers ever felt otherwise?)

Her knobby knees, matchstick skinny legs and long, spindly arms make her look horribly emaciated but to her, there's still a long way to go before she achieves the 'picture perfect beauty' that most girls on shampoo bottles seem to have. She smiles, though, because hey, she's living in a hostel now and skipping meals will be so much easier than before.

She is twenty five years old, when the pain and the demons and the expectations and the weighing machines and the skipped meals and the claw marks and the concealers and the models with their unrealistic figures and society with its messed up notions of beauty become too much. They kill her, literally and a few days later she is found dead in her apartment, hanging from the ceiling fan, her neck snapped in two, going round and round and round, like a cruel cycle that never ends.