The mirror showed only the bridge of my nose to the top of my head. Maybe it was this cropping of my face that did it. Whenever I caught my own eye in the mirror, I would pause and stare, not at anything in particular. I would mostly just wonder. It wasn’t an observation of the shape of my eyebrows or the color of my hair. It was a questioning of the whole shell in front of me. Not even in a physical sense but more of a placement kind of thought. Why had I been placed here, inside this shell? The mind disconnected from its body.
My mind would then spiral into these deep mysteries I questioned about myself. It seems so odd now that I thought this way, but the questions were more familiar then than any answers are now. Why had I been placed here? With what intention? Why within this family? What was I? Was this right? And if it was, should I have felt more sure of it? Why was I so uncertain?
The young mind questioning the creature in the mirror was connected to something larger. Something I’ve lost touch with. A voice softened by an ear trained to listen to society, to expectations. I’ve lost the mystery of how I connect to the bigger picture around me. Instead, I’ve gained questions that are so small within myself: Why did you say that? Why can’t you finish that? When will you change that?
And I’ve never learned the answers to any of these questions.