A Good Mirror.
When I was about to get married (R.I.P.), I was presented with a myriad of advices. Well meaning folks were forthcoming with tidbits that they felt were staples in the success or failure of God-ordained unions. It was both sweet and overwhelming.
While much of the advice offered me no longer aligns with my worldview, there is one that sticks with a bit more fervor.
That marriage is a mirror.
A person much older than me to told me that marriage would give you the best and worst of yourself, without filters, without reservation, and you would have to face it or your marriage would fail.
I feel that it was both true, for I experienced all of those things, and nearsighted.
No one said that both people would have to be willing to face themselves fearlessly, and if one shrinks from the responsibility, the mirror warps. Funhouse style.
No one said that you could find yourself staring into an untrustworthy mirror when their coping, control, and fear overthrows their care.
No one said that your “mirror” could be something other than a mirror.
A few weeks ago I was contemplating this, because I found myself staring into my lover’s eyes (the only words I can think to describe them accurately) and I thought:
How would we live life if our only mirror were the eyes of someone who loved us very much?
Incomprehensibly?
Completely?
Benevolently?
That’s when the kaleidoscope burst open and turned into some secret of the universe.
A warm, brilliant, vivid feeling of wonder crept into my bones. I would have loved to be in his eyes at that moment. I would have loved to see what he sees without the long-suffered, taunting voice of my inner critic chiming her bells in the background.
”He cannot possibly see all of you if he only sees good.”
But, for one of the rarer moments in my life, love had struck a chord much stronger, and I could drown her out.
All I could focus on was my revelation: This MUST be how you know a good mirror.
You find someone with a willingness to see all of you, and with enough compassion to show you the balance of everything that comprises who you are.
And they are not afraid.
Of you.
Or of seeing themselves in you.
I began to imagine the most beloved persons in my life, seeing themselves the way I see them. All the imperfect and tempered ways they are human-shaped starlight, roiling over their edges with themselves-ness and proving over and over that they are miraculous. Mistakes and cracks, all kintsugi-covered, turning them into artworks that line the halls of my heart.
The ones I trust with my wholeness.
The ones who tell me when I have gone too far without letting me lose the awareness that I am held fast.
Even in the difficult things, it rings true to my heart.
The person I witnessed in the eyes of this person I love, is the person I see as myself, when I am honest.
This overflowed into pondering the relationship with self and how I know that, objectively, I can be someone that I am proud of, kind to, and genuinely adore. I can also be someone who owns the mistakes and flaws I contain and can use that power to shift into better.
Holy, holy, wholly loved. (Holy has shifted too, but we can discuss that later.)
I remembered the moments of near desperation where I sat myself down and told myself that I needed to listen to the people that used to hold these important positions in my life. Positions they might not have held had I known better lovers. I was all-too-willing to bend my emotional body into the shape of a wavering image to appease the idea that I was being shown the proper reflection of myself.
I got it twisted.
Again, sometimes you have bad mirrors.
It’s most certainly (probably) not the intent of the person across from you, to be untrustworthy. I have experienced that there are humans out there that cannot, for their lives, look at another person without their ego whispering that there is something wrong, and it is with them, caused by the other. Whether by comparison, prejudice, or the passage of time, another is a threat to something they have need of keeping for themselves. Because they cannot circumnavigate their own insecurity, they cannot possibly be a resource for clarity. I left their presence with a sense of not-enoughness, lack of solution, and loss. I have lost myself in that wavy, curved, deception one too many times.
Other times, one can stumble/fall/stage-dive into the dilemma of when the mirror isn’t a mirror at all, and are dealing with a projector. Undoubtedly the most confusing of all possibilities. Not dissimilar to bad mirrors in feelings of loss, but overwhelming in emotional murk. It is the submerging into an alternate dimensional bog, where the familiar paths of presumption lead you far beyond the limits of memory. I can only attest that the resurfacing from the cesspool of another’s reality feels like crawling from a hateful womb. It was dark, it was all encompassing, but you had to outgrow it to escape it. You have to learn the shape of your own life and begin to trace it back out of the chaos. It is an understatement to say this is a difficult underworld to navigate.
Did I mention that the “nearsightedness” I referred to earlier was mostly in that they only applied this to marriage? Any partnership in life that has your trust and respect has the potential to be a mirror. Your family members, your best friend, your roommate, your dog. All mirrors. We cannot ignore the facets of relationships that shape us, and we must learn to listen to the ones that call us back to who we know we are.
I hope you know who loves you.
Who sees you.
I hope you get to witness the joy of being known and being loved.
To be free and set free.
Notwithstanding obtuse presumption, I hope you found my musings a help.
