I developed a fascination with mirrors at a very young age. At first it was innocent enough. I was trying, like many of my pre-desesters, to fall into the mirror and the world of "Into the Looking Glass" and "Alice in Wonderland" and out of a colourless reality. (I used to look for holes in the ground as well that might lead to Wonderland until I accidentally fell down a ravine at the age of 7 and bruised my tail bone, keeping me out of school for a week. Worst. Injury. Ever.) I wanted to meet the white queen and be her champion, to give the white rabbit a timex in exchange for his friendship, to not have to make sense and to talk in rhymes and riddles. My mother scolded me horrifically, thinking me to be the most self obsessed child she had ever met and told me to stop staring at myself. Of course, this is when I began to stare.
Sometimes I look in the mirror and I'm fascinated. Other times I'm bored, surprised or disappointed. You think by now I'd know what my own face looks like, but I only have a vague idea. Its a blank canvas with a nearly perfect complexion, mildly high cheekbones, round distasteful nose, lackluster expression and lack of conventional beauty that can be garishly attractive with the accessories, but is less then adequate when not decorated. It does not represent who I am, and would trade some of the more desirable symmetrical qualities in order to be more disheveled, more unique, more reflective of who I think I am.
Nevertheless, I catch my reflection in patients' rooms, toasters, puddles and store window and stare at the stranger in the reflection as often as I can.
