I sat across from you at the table this evening and all I could think was, you are so beautiful. How can you not see it? How can you be so sure that you’re unattractive? Someone’s got a lot to answer for, that raised you believing a lie.
Now I’m not speaking just to you, I’m talking to myself and to the spaces inbetween, where the fine-webbed cracks appear on the inside of the surfaces. Do we all only see our flaws? Are we raised on denial, comparison and self-blindness? What do you see in the looking glass? Who? The person you WANT to see? The one that is thinner? younger? The you with straighter teeth and perfect skin?
Skipping like a stone from mirrored beauty in other’s eyes, focus goes only on the elements that could stand some improvement. What would be found if we really looked? Gorgeous eyes go unattended for the notice of a nose, warm coloring ignored for some other self-perceived flaw.
Does this mirror make my butt look fat or is it the eyes I’m looking through?
I can feel my mind slide off and around the edges of the things I don’t want to admit to myself about myself. If I stand still and wait, it peers back around the corner, as if surprised that I’m not keeping up. I think: this poodle on my head is extra spastic today, up it goes in a clip. I think: Not another spot on my chin, why can’t my stupid face clear up? I don’t have the energy of a teenager, it hardly seems fair to have the skin problems of one. I keep my head up, don’t go below-throat because then I don’t have to admit to what I don’t see. I don’t have to admit that I’m not happy with the way I look.
In my mind, I can wear a belt and my nose isn’t so blunt. The mirror goes off like a bomb every morning: BANG! THAT’S YOU. Good thing it’s all so blurry until I finish my face and put my glasses on as I leave the room. Get thee behind me, mirror! I’m beautiful inside my brain and isn’t that what matters?