mirror

i have, what i at least consider to be, a deep personal connection to, yet healthy fear of mirrors.

they've always fascinated and frightened me. i used to believe they were portals to pocket universes when i was a child. i would stand on the bathroom stool and stare into my mirror-self's eyes, trying to catch him blinking, people in his world moving where people in mine weren't. never once did i accomplish this, though it never deterred me from trying, and i found out pretty young about the phenomenon of your face beginning to melt and float around if you stare at it for too long. i think i did this in a desperate attempt for friendship. tiny christian homeschooled queer child, i wanted to find anyone in any universe who might talk to me, take interest in me, and love me.

in my teen years, this morphed into a genuine phobia. years of abuse from family, partners, and people i thought of as friends turned me into a self-hating, paranoid little creature. i fell into an awful state of psychosis. i thought i was dead, a ghost, and mirrors terrified me on the principle that they told me i was alive, which i did not want to be. not one bit. believing i was dead was a hell of a lot better than believing i really was living my life, and mirrors did nothing but ruin this self-indulgent, involuntary fantasy. i covered every single mirror in my house that i could with blankets, and stuck sigils on them to ward off all of that evil i swore they held.

eventually, the inevitable happened, and my brain shattered enough for people to realize something wasn't quite right with me. my diagnoses (or "problem list", as my therapist's office likes to call it, as if that's somehow better), include autism, borderline personality disorder, and dissociative identity disorder.

all of that enchantment and fear, swearing there was evil or friendship to be found inside. in the end, really, it's because i, myself, am a mirror. 

despite not receiving that autism diagnosis until the age of eighteen, i had figured out years prior that i don't understand how humans are "supposed" to interact. whenever i happen to be in a new environment, i spend a good long while just sitting and observing. if i learn enough about how those people interact, i can, in some broken, disjointed manner, act like they do.