There is a mirror in my bedroom. It’s attached to the sliver of mint green wall between the door that leads out into the hallway and the door to my closet. There’s a crate of stuffed animals underneath the mirror; sometimes, in the night, when I wake up to use the restroom, I stub my toe on it (and sometimes, in my sleepy delirium, I apologize to the crate).
I didn’t always have a mirror in my bedroom. I didn’t always have a crate of stuffed animals, either. When I was a kid, the stuffed animals sat on my bed - all of them, because I didn’t want any one stuffed animal to feel left out. To feel like I didn’t love it, or like it had done something wrong to make it deserve to be unloved. I suppose I knew what that feeling was like; sitting at the top of the stairs listening to my mom dance with my little brother to “Shut Up and Dance” while I was grounded again, banished to my bedroom.
I did have a favorite stuffed animal, although I’d never admit it. A red panda named Rascal, which my mom bought for me at the zoo when I was around 8 or 9. I remember one night, my parents threatened to chop off his head with a pocket knife, because I was lying to them (again) about stealing sweets (again). They didn’t do it, but I did start learning how to sew after that night. Just in case.
I don’t enjoy thinking about my childhood. It gives me this uncomfortable feeling deep in the pit of my stomach, like fingers twisting in my chest, like bile rising in my throat. It gives me a headache, too - forcing up old memories like that always does. All it does is cause problems, so I generally try to avoid it. “The best years of my life” aren’t really something that I enjoy reminiscing on, so I don’t.
That’s not to say my childhood was horrible. I mean, no one ever beat me, and I always had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. My parents did their damn best; they weren’t villains and I hate to paint that picture of them. Sure, they made plenty of mistakes, but so did I, so maybe no one needs to apologize. Maybe we were all human. Maybe it’s no one’s fault.
But at the end of the day, when I catch my own gaze in my bedroom mirror, and I stop in place to look for a little too long - think for a little too long - what I see is a person who is content to be slightly forlorn. Content to be a little bit lost in the sands of their own mind.
I suppose I get so hung up on the mirror because I don’t really recognize the person who I see reflected in it. Dirty blonde hair, dark brown eyes, freckles, and a small, triangular gap between my two front teeth. That’s not me; it can’t be. But then again, when I look at the person I used to be, immortalized forever in school photos lining the halls outside my bedroom, I don’t recognize her either. I guess I’m not that kid anymore. Who am I?
Recently, I was asked if I was okay. I was told that I hadn’t seemed like myself lately. I responded by saying that I was fine, just tired and stressed about school. I was a liar.
I wanted to ask - have you ever felt like somehow you’re not really you? Like your body is the same but something inside just isn’t right?
I wanted to ask - do you ever feel like there’s another person in here with you, squirming underneath your skin? Do you ever feel like you’re burning up inside from the carbon dioxide they release with every breath?
I wanted to ask - do you ever feel like there is a layer of glass between you and the rest of the world? Do you ever feel like, no matter how hard you bang on the glass, it’ll never break, and no matter how loud you scream, no one will ever truly hear you? I wanted to ask-
Do you ever feel trapped?
I don’t really feel like a person. I haven’t for a very long time. I feel more like a ghost, dwelling within my own body like an unwanted guest. I’m not the only one. I can fit so many phantoms under my skin, it seems. Phantoms formed from a hammer crashing into a mirror, again and again until all that was left were shards.
Shards that, if we were to push them together again, assembling them back into their original place, wouldn’t reflect just one face anymore.
I guess in the end, I don’t really know who I am. No, that’s not true - I know the places that I can find myself. In clouds and stars and ink and a crescendo of descent. And I know the person that I want to become - someone worth loving, worth keeping, worth staying for. I guess I’m just stuck in the space between two shores - an ocean, where getting lost feels like drowning. Like burning. Like boiling inside.
But I guess that’s better than being stuck on one shore, longingly looking at the other from across an unnavigable ocean.
One of the ghosts within me told me something, as I watched the sun set over the shore and wondered, hopeless and lost, if it would ever rise again.
She told me that she knows how heavy the weight of existence is. She told me that she knows how heavy it is, and how hard it is to lift it every morning, knowing it will crush us if we don’t. She knows the burden we bear; the sharp, clean cracks in our glass body that would dig into the skin of anyone we get too close to and hurt, hurt, hurt.
She told me to let go. To share that burden. She asked Atlas to set down the world. She asked Orobouros to break the ring.
And another ghost inside of me told me that I was loved. He reminded me how far from being alone I was. And he told me that I’m stuck, and I’m not going anywhere right now. But we’ve been stuck so many times before, and we’ve never stayed stuck. So I won’t either. No matter how mixed up and lost in my own head I get.
I stare into my own face in an elementary school photo and realize that it’s not just mine. That the burden of everything that little girl went through is not just mine to bear.
I stare into my own face in a shard of shattered mirror and realize that, for the first time, I see myself reflected in it.
I stare at the sun setting over the shore, casting a pink-and-orange glow over our home. It’s beautiful. It’s agonizing. It’s everything.
And every time it rises again - it’s you. It’s me. It’s us.
