I have someone who treats me badly every day. I wake up in the morning and she is the first person I want to see. I stumble out of bed, barely acknowledging the mess of sheets and blankets that have been pushed on to the floor at some point during the night. I make my way into the bathroom because this is where I meet her first. We begin and end our days in the same place. It is both a battle and a tryst.
I see her immediately. My rapid thoughts are drawn to her the moment I step through the bathroom door. I dread looking at her, I know she will hurt me, but I also know I need to. I need to stare at her, scrutinize her, let her scrutinize me. I need to let her break me down, insult me, terrorize my thoughts, and suffocate my sense of self-worth. I need her to abuse me because I know nothing else, at least, I can’t remember anything else. I did it to myself. She is me and I am her. See, my abuser is my reflection, she lives inside mirrors, and I have come to live my life around these mirrors.
I wasn’t always this way. When I was a young child, I hardly thought much of mirrors. I never bothered to look at my reflection, and when I did, it had no sort of effect on me or how I felt. There was never a stomach-dropping moment of realization that I am not beautiful—no flood of internal insults, no abuse. The mirror couldn’t hurt me then.
When I turned fourteen, a classmate showed me a magazine she had in her locker. She pointed out the women she thought were the prettiest, letting me know that we should try our best to look like them. These women looked nothing like me. They were glamorous—voluptuous and thin at the same time, with full lips and flowing hair. Their skin gleamed and their eyes shone bright. Their smiles were perfect, straight teeth of the whitest color. They all looked as if they knew a secret no one else did, a secret of eternal happiness; a secret of eternal beauty.
That night I went home and undressed myself in front of the mirror. I really, for the first time, examined my reflection and took an actual interest in what I saw. This is where the relationship began. I had brown hair. I had never thought about it much before, but now the mirror was telling me it was boring—stringy, really, and the way that it hung limply on the sides of my face? Disgusting. My eyes were way too close to one another, and the more I looked at them, the squintier they seemed to appear. They were nothing like the wide, bright eyes of the women I was shown earlier in the day. My nose was way too big for my face; my lips were thin and colorless. My shoulders were wide, my breasts extraordinarily unimpressive, my stomach flabby, my legs short. I was horrified.
How had I never realized any of this before? Somehow I felt relieved—thank God the mirror was here to show me, before it was too late. The mirror would help me become the person I wanted to be; the beautiful girl I was sure had to live somewhere inside of me if only I tried a little bit to get her out. I vowed to lead my life from then on out by the mirror, for the mirror, and in the mirror. She would guide me to beauty. I just had to stick with her.
My days turned into a tumultuous roller coaster ride of insecurity. I couldn’t make it through a sentence or complete thought without wondering if my hair was in place or if my face looked chubby. I couldn’t have my picture taken without also having an emotional breakdown. I thought about the mirror nonstop; I would excuse myself from class to go meet up with her in the bathrooms. I would see her in the sides of buildings, in the backs of spoons, in my turned-off television set. It’s surprising how often you can run into your reflection if you really want to, or in my case, need to. Everywhere I turned there were more reasons to believe the terrible things that my mirror was telling me. The gorgeous women I saw in the magazine that day turned into all the gorgeous women I saw on television, in movies, and walking by me on the street. Soon I was seeing them on every form of social media, posting pictures of their perfect faces and flawless bodies. How could I keep up; how could I ever compete?
My relationship with my mirror is the longest I’ve ever had. I can’t get away from her, even though all she does is hurt me. She has broken me down to the point where I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live normally without her. I need to see myself at all times to ensure I am the closest I can be to what the mirror tells me I should be. I live my life based on what she says to me every morning, and throughout the day. I go to bed with her words ringing in my ears; I wake up exhausted and hurt. It isn’t easy living in an abusive relationship with your reflection, but I am certain and saddened to know that I am not the only one. It would be hard not to live this way, what with the constant bombardment of examples of beauty—on television, social media, print—it’s everywhere. I’ll stay committed to my abuser, my mirror, my reflection.
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