Mirror Monster
I have a black cat and throw neither salt nor shade. I wear blue, but not just so I can touch it: and sometimes, opening the umbrella indoors really is the more favorable option. But there’s a full-length mirror by the sidewalk in front of my last address — and there it’ll stay.
For someone who loves the Lord her God with all her heart, I am unnaturally afraid of mirrors. Despite the Bible’s command to be unafraid, I am, of mirrored glass, terrified. I don’t know if I’m more frightened by mirrors in the dark or in the light.
Who taught me that myself, as I am, wasn’t good enough? The book of psalms tells me that I’m fearfully and wonderfully made, but all I am is fearful until my face is made up. Some women doll themselves up for fun, but I know my bathroom shelves are lined with insecurity in vials, tubes and bottles. My perceived inferiority is the hole in my purse. I need it like a hole in my head.
He taught me that I was inanimate: my divorce is finalized, but the feeling remains. The objectification used to come from the outside, but now it lives in me. The book of proverbs tells me that beauty is vain, but all I am is what the world thinks me to be. A mirror reflecting the opinions of others distills the life inside of me.
Why is it that when they say, “be still,” all I can hear is the devil telling me that I’ll never amount to more than the girl I used to be? I hear laughter echoing from the dark recesses of my mind and a man’s voice: “you’ll come crawling back to me.” With all this within me, with all this before me, I don’t know how I can face the day: and so, I paint my face.
Doll me up so I don’t look crazy. Doll me up so I don’t look dead. Doll me up so I’m enough to somebody. I need insecurity like a hole in my head. Fix my face so I can face the world because I’m still learning how to go outside without plaster on it. Fix my face because like many of the colonized, the voice of the colonizer still lives in me.
And I guess it never occurred to me, really, that spending time with the truth in the morning would help me. Like water into wine, make my makeup a choice, not a ritual rooted in perceived inferiority. I talk too much because I’m scared of the silence, but sometimes I wonder what I would hear if I let my tongue be still. I should try it sometime. Perhaps, as the book of Matthew calls me to do, I will.
