“Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?”
“You, my queen is fair it’s true. But little Snow White is fairer than you.”
We all heard the story and related to poor Snow White with the evil step-mother. We were happy about the dwarves and thrilled by the Prince who gave her The Kiss that saved her. Ugh! No wonder we kept looking for some male to save us. The fairytales all had him and we wanted him too. Then, of course, there was the mirror who sided with the evil stepmother and told her she was fairest in the land until she wasn’t. Then all hell broke loose. Is that when we got fascinated with our mirrors and images? Why didn’t we learn that mirrors can lie and one day they tell us the truth? And why did we, little girls, want to be prettier than any other? Shouldn’t we have learned about how jealous others could be? Couldn’t we have learned that being too pretty would make us targets for others, and, in the end, even some of our ‘Princes’? How many of us, once we found our ‘Prince(s)’ worried about begin pregnant and, omg, fat?
I have a sense of growing up with a ‘mirror’. My adoptive parents adopted me after the loss of their new baby girl. I had to compete with an angel. Angels are perfect. I could not compete. I grew up with an inferiority complex because I simply could not be good enough. I never spoke the thoughts out loud, but I felt inferior and my mother would have been broken-hearted had she known I felt this. I was a throw-away baby and was saved but could not appreciate the wealth in my life because I had been taken by them. Lord knows, as an adult and when my maternal birth family found me, I learned enough to know I could not have survived if I had not been given away. I spent the majority of my life angry, anxious, feeling worthless, fearful and frustrated and I do not expect anyone who has not been a throw-away baby to understand that this goes bone deep. I had said it many times in my life, that I was lucky to be taken in by the awesome parents I had. But I never felt more than a disappointment and my adoptive parents did not live long enough to see me really fly. My mother lived long enough to say how proud she was of me. It mattered that she said it many times. But she could never know just how really high I could go.
We all have a Mirror. It is our alter Ego. We have a story we allow our mirror to tell us. We see what we want to see. Sometimes, and especially as we age, it begins to tell the truth. I have always hated having my photograph taken. I refuse to see myself aging, in a way, in that as I look in the mirror, it is not permanent. In photos, it is. Photos tell only the truth. Mirrors we have a choice as to what we see. Little by little, the truth sinks in, though, as I check each morning to see that I have even brushed my hair. As I continue to accept my body changes, I work harder on my mind, heart and soul. It is only that that I might have some control over. I may, yet, cover all my mirrors with black cloth of mourning…lol… or accept what I see for real.
©Carol Desjarlais 8.29.20
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