The Mirror That Knows My Red Secrets

Mirrors​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ have always scared me, not the thing made of glass, but the thing that comes out from me if I stay too long. The world has a version of me that it thinks is polished, that it thinks is steady, and that it thinks is convincingly fine, but the mirror…the mirror sees the red that is simmering beneath my skin.

Redness, I remember, coming from my cheek and rising to my forehead, as if my emotions were bleeding out of me, and leaking through the cracks of my skin. I wasn’t angry; I wasn’t calm either. I was something in between something I didn’t know how to name. And maybe that’s the reason I kept coming back to that reflection: because it was the only place where I could see all the things that I tried too hard to hide from everyone else.

I​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ saw people putting on faces as if they were actors putting on costumes very early in my life. Faking people, above all, are the masters of emotional makeup - they can cover kindness with cruelty, interest with boredom, love with emptiness.

They once fooled me; their smiles seemed to me as heartfelt, and their gentle words as having more value than they actually did. But I started to see something strange: those people who only pretended to be strong got weak when it was safe, only when the mirror was the only witness.

Those people who cried in front of the mirror, never in front of another person, were the ones. They looked after their tears in the glass as if the mirror was the only one they trusted not to judge them.

And I loved them with more than my share of sympathy. Maybe each of us keeps the most real emotions for the quiet places where no one can applaud or ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌criticize.

Opposite​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ to these, there also lived the people who looked at themselves in the mirror with a kind of stubborn sparkle in their eyes, as if they tried to trick themselves into thinking that they were okay. I did the same thing. I would be there, I would pretend to smile, and I would silently utter the words, “You’re fine. You’re strong. You’ve got this.” Even though I did not really believe it, I thought it was logical that when one tore their self apart and then said the opposite, it mended their self. Occasionally, I was baffled by each side of my personality, one that cried quietly in the middle of the night and the other that pretended everything was fine during the day. Perhaps both were true. Perhaps both were false. The mirror didn’t tell me that. It merely reflected what I felt, not what I were. And that was the hardest thing - arriving at the point of an emotional experience without the need for any handling guides.

Over time, the mirror stopped being my enemy, and it became my silent therapist. I don’t think that I would look at myself in the mirror anymore to judge, but rather to understand. I would be looking at the reddening under my eyes, the tightness of my jaw, and the forced peace in my mouth.

Life keeps on asking for different masks from us, masks that we wear at work, in social situations, masks of politeness, that I hadn’t even realized that I had forgotten what my own face looked like when I wasn’t trying to impress or protect anyone. The mirror was the one that helped me to come back to that. It told me that being emotionally honest is the very moment when you take off the ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌performance.

Also, sometimes, emotional honesty is red - raw, flushed, swollen with things we don’t want anyone to ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌see.

Ultimately,​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ I ended up with the uncomfortable and at the same time freeing thought that inside we all have faces staring back at us from the mirror and red emotions. We all change from truth to acting, from heartfelt emotion to instinct of survival. Some people conceal their characters behind laughter, some behind silence, some behind flawless faces made for the world.

However, the mirror, very much like life itself, is there to reveal the vulnerable, complicated, multi-layered aspects of our humanity, the ones that we try to hide. In this case, it’s the mirror. And maybe it is the only spot where we stop deceiving ourselves, not because we want to, but because the reflection never lies ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌back.