Nothing about her was big. Perhaps she had a big heart or a big brain or big dreams. Maybe she had a big, strong voice. The kind of voice that persuaded and demanded respect. But that was all invisible at first glance.

She often gazed at her reflection. She was slight and gaunt. Once pink, her pale, freckled skin stretched over her hollow cheekbones. Her collarbones jutted out from her slim shoulders, creating deep pockets when she inhaled. Her arms and legs were long and bony, and her thighs did not touch. Her heavy eyelids sunk, dark and gray from sleepless nights. Her deep blue eyes stared back at her as she analyzed herself in the mirror.

In her eyes, there was strength, but it was clouded by fear. She remained alert, but her face was blank.

Pale, and blank.

A sob clogged itself in her throat, but no tears managed to escape her eyes. The less emotion she showed, the more people assumed she was happy. Besides, she was always smiling. Her cheeks looked plumper that way. But a smile did not solve all of her problems.

She slipped a red dress over her head and watched as it draped over her skin. It was shapeless and hung like a smock, just like everything else she owned.  She long awaited the day when that dress would hug a feminine figure instead of a skeleton, but until then, she would continue to gaze into a mirror with her sunken eyes. She would hide her bony ribs with her bony arms, hoping and praying that one day, she would be different.

She wondered why people had wanted to be like her. They praised the gap between her thighs, the prominence of her collarbones, and the circumference of her waist. But they were so obsessed with their twisted ideals that it blinded them from her pain. Having thighs that touched, full cheeks, and hidden bones never received a diagnosis. Being average was deemed healthy, but being different than the norm required medical intervention.

She looked away from the glass as a tear trickled down her cheek. It was a tear of sore memory, of defeat. A tear shed on behalf of the ones who isolated and labelled her, the ones who did not understand.

She was not worried until they intervened. But the false diagnoses, the hopeless rants, the argument over her bones and her cheeks and her waist and her thighs created a problem from nothing. The ones who were supposed to bring hope had been wrong the whole time. They attempted to cure an incurable disease and to fix what was never broken. They made her afraid of them, but worst of all, afraid of herself.

They spent years trying to decipher the little girl without knowing her identity. They were unsure of her dreams, of her strengths and her weaknesses, and of her passions. They had wasted so much time assuming that they had become oblivious to the truth.

There was no cure for being small.

It may have taken many years for her to understand it, to believe it, but she finally did.

As she swallowed the last of her tears, wiping the salty streaks from her eyes, she looked again at the mirror with unwavering faith. There was nothing wrong with her bones or her skin or her cheeks. There was nothing wrong with her hair or her eyes or her legs. She learned to accept them all because they made her unique, even if the norms made them wrong.

And while the girl was small, everything about her was big. She had big plans for the future, and she was in control. Her big brain was smart and capable and her big heart was full of love. She grew to love her laugh and her eyes, but most of all, she adored her smile. She decided that if her smile was big, then it would be easier to see that every part of her was too.