Mirrors

thursday september 23 2004

Mirrors never lie. But that doesn’t mean they tell the truth either.
When we look into a mirror all we see is what we want to see, what we expect to see, what we think is there.
A mirror is just about useful for making sure you have your pants on the right way round. And that’s all.

But there’s another mirror in our souls that is much more dangerous. A dark and deep pool that we never dare look into. Full of our own fears and trepidations.

To summon the courage to look into that mirror and see it for what it is, a fantasy, a warped reflection of our minds eye and not our physical being.

It was september 2000 ....

I was lying in bath trying to make a decision.

To go or to stay. 

To stay with him was to opt for a situation that was slowly but surely eating away at my self-esteem. But that was why I was lying there wasn’t it? In water that was going from hot to tepid to downright chilly. The self-esteem I had wasn’t enough to fill an eggcup, and that was painfully obvious every time I burst into tears, and bursting into tears was something that was beginning to happen much too often over the last few years. 
I always managed to bluff it even in public spaces. An acquired pollen allergy usually helped in the Spring/Summer and the flu in the Autumn/Winter. People thought I was always ill anyway as it was the only way for me to get out of most social responsibilities that I didn’t feel I could handle. 

My partner loved me being ill because it made him the long suffering martyr, and when he really wanted me with him then my being ill was not an option for me.

I remember a trip to Vienna.

He was late as usual, and as usual I was doing my desperate best to remain calm. There was a load of shit happening at work and Rescue Remedy just wasn’t helping. I’d finally got him almost out of the door (I’d lied about the departure time as usual so there was no problem there) when the thing I feared the most happened. Pain shot through my back.
My back had been a source of pain for the last few years getting steadily worse as time went on. Sometimes just a nagging ache but other times, once in a while, a body jarring spasm that would debilitate me for weeks. This was one of the latter. I actually passed out in the car on the way to the airport. Yes, of course we went to the airport. I got on the plane too with a face like death. 

That didn’t stop him. 

I stepped out of the plane in Vienna, dropped to the floor in agony, received Valium shots there and then in the airport and spent the rest of the holiday in a Valium injections enhanced hotel room.
It was the embarrassment that did it. I crawled out of the taxi into the hotel, literally on hands and feet, into the lift and then to the hotel room.

I cannot forget it.