As I’ve been going through this outer transformation for the last few months with clothes, hair, and makeup, I’ve also been going through folders of old writing to see if there was anything worth dusting off and polishing for my blog.  I found several things, including this poem that I wrote back in 2023.  Like all of my creative endeavors, it was spontaneous, seeming to come from somewhere (or someone) other than myself.  I have always wondered what other people see in me, particularly my husband.  My sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-value was so low that I actually thought that there must be something wrong with him in order to be with someone so perceivably terrible.

One night as I contemplated these things, this poem came to me, and has sat nestled in my writing folders ever since.  It shows how I viewed myself back then and for most of my life, which is greatly contrasted with how I see myself now.  I used to “flinch” from mirrors, as the poem says, assiduously avoiding them because I didn’t like what I saw.

Now I have gotten used to seeing myself in mirrors and actually liking what I see, whether I’m wearing makeup or not.  A great deal of that was precipitated by my recent haircut and dye job, which so dramatically changed my appearance that I feel like a brand-new person.  I’m not just used to looking into mirrors, I want to look in them so I can see how nice I look now.

Furthermore, I’m engaging in typically feminine activities that I’ve never cared about for unconscious reasons that I didn’t understand until the last few years.  Being attractive got me attention I didn’t want, attention that contributed to my shitty self-image over the years.  So I stayed as far away from anything that might make me pretty.

A recent mystical experience healed that damage and has fixed that problem.  I don’t feel like I’m walking around with a target on my back anymore, and I no longer feel as though my husband (and indeed all men) are constantly engaged in passive sexual predation.  Instead, I want the attention that I shunned for decades and am having fun with my hair, nails, makeup, and clothes.  The “shit mirror” (h/t Nine Inch Nails – Bad Witch) I’ve been gazing into or avoiding completely has been smashed.  How I feel today is a complete 180 turn from how I felt when I wrote this poem, which feels more like a dirge for Beauty itself.

Two years ago I made a spreadsheet for habits I wanted to instill into my life, including affirmations for each month.  One of them was to be able to say that I “possessed beauty”, which I placed in the month of December because I knew I would need all year long to build up to even thinking those words.  I’m quite a ways off my timetable, but at last, I can at least think the words, “I’m pretty” to myself and break into a spontaneous smile when I look at myself in the mirror now, instead of flinching at the shit mirror.

Shit Mirror

If I could look in the mirror through your eyes, what would I see?

Would I see what I see?

Something less or more, or different entirely?

What would I see that would explain your patience, loyalty, and tenacity?

I look into the inner mirror and cannot reconcile what I see with the love I am given.

I am either surrounded by blind people, or I am the blind one.

I am divided within between Knowledge and Emotion.

An impenetrable wall of shame and fear and doubt between logic and feeling that blocks progress on both sides and causes a constant war to rage internally.

So what would I see with your eyes?

The same twisted, tangled mess I see, riddled with rot and violence?

What redeems the gnarled, infected tree of my soul into something worthy of continued tending?

Perhaps merely the human sense that all living things are worth cultivating into health.

Perhaps recognition that I did not distort myself on my own.

Perhaps a vision of potential I myself cannot imagine, let alone see, since I have always been this way.

Occasionally I catch a glimpse of what you see in me, and a lightning bolt of fear strikes me because it’s so different from what I see.

Who is that stranger in the mirror?

I ask before flinching away.