Reflections
When I was five, we lived in an apartment where my sister got the spare bedroom all to herself. My parents bought her a dresser with a huge mirror. She is six years older than me, and so the world she was on the brink of, so full of its insecurities and doubts, was unknowable to me. So when we moved a few years later and the mirror ended up being placed in my new room, I could not comprehend her disappointment. It was nothing more than a highly polished pane of glass to me. What a vain person my sister was, to desire to look upon her image so!
Now almost ten full years have passed. The mirror still resides in my room, and my sister’s room still has none. Now I stare into it every morning, every evening, inventorying every last blemish in my appearance, peering at my own face in the hopes of a glimpse at my soul. Now at last I understand that it is not vanity that motivates the one who sits in front of the mirror, but fear. Fear that I might not be good enough, for what I do not know. Fear of the harsh judgements that fall my way from those I see every day, yet are complete strangers. And most of all, fear that I might one day lose sight of myself and drift away, nameless, into the depths of a faceless ocean.
