One of my favorite family shopping past times was to entertain myself with three-way mirrors. I was never a fan of shopping because so much time was taken to do fittings, try-ons, and waiting. If we shopped for maybe just one thing, I might feel differently about shopping now. However, my mother always seemed to make a ritual out of shopping. We could spend what felt like hours in just one store. So finding interesting things to do that didn’t lead to me getting into trouble was important.
While my siblings went through the torture of fittings during these shopping moments, I spent time browsing through clothing, looking at shoes, and categorizing everything in sight. Being the oldest had afforded me with quick ways to get the job of fittings and other tortuous shopping maladies out of the way as quickly as I could, but I was also viewed as the least difficult of the three children when shopping for clothing.
I usually hurried through these fittings to get to my most fun activity – looking at my reflection in three-way mirrors. It may sound crazy, but when I was a child looking at myself in the mirror was actually frowned upon. As a young child, I didn’t use the mirror much at all at home. It was always said by older adults that looking in the mirror meant that a person thought more highly of themselves … thought they were “cute” and would more likely poke their chests out in pride. When I was a child, I didn’t know why this didn’t make sense to me. How was I supposed to know what I looked like if I didn’t look in the mirror?
The three-way mirror was a way for me to really see myself from all angles. It was also a time to play, watch myself make facial expressions, and think about the reflections of my many selves. I remember wondering what it would be like to have so many of me and what each me might be thinking. In my young mind, I actually checked to see if any of the reflected facial expressions were any different than the way I might have been feeling in that moment. Those times were forms of play that many psychologists today would call mirror play. Psychologists might even say that this mirror play was a very important part of my growth and development.
As I became older, I would develop a love-hate relationship with mirrors. In the era of horror films that seemed big to me during the late 70s, I had an aversion to sleeping near mirrors at night for fear of seeing monstrous reflections. It didn’t help that there were other scary sayings about the wickedness of mirrors that were a cultural phenomenon in my family. I hated hearing these stories, and it didn’t help that during the 70s mirrors were used to decorate the walls. One of my aunts had a mirrored-room – squares of mirrors covering all around the walls and on the ceilings. That aunt never got any sleepover requests from me! Then at home, I’d literally cover the mirror in my bedroom just so I could fall asleep.
In an effort to keep up with my appearance, mirrors became an important piece of my fashion and style during my youth. Yet, when I suffered through various abuses, my reflection in a mirror was the last thing I wanted to see. Words hurt emotionally, but seeing a mirrored reflection of those words through my face and body seemed to make the pain worse. During those times, I shuttered every time I walked by a mirror.
Many times I recall looking into the mirror at my reflection as I cried, laughed, and even talked out my feelings. I did this periodically for years into my late teens until I no longer wanted to look at myself because of deep emotional woundedness and the feelings of unworthiness. At one time, my mirrored reflection was my friend. I understood my reflection, and my reflection understood me. When I believed I couldn’t share my feelings and thoughts with anyone, I knew I could look at my reflection and my reflection would understand. I knew my reflection was me.
Back then, I didn’t realize that I was developing an art for self-awareness. It’s just that after my late teens, I ceased looking into the mirror at my reflection for a long time because I didn’t like who was reflected back to me from others. I was called ugly, and I felt unlovable. I believed what I was told until began to feel better about myself. Later in adulthood, I learned to use other means of self-reflecting, but once I regained my self-confidence and began rebuilding my self-worth by working on many of my toxic issues, I reconnected once again with my reflection. I reconnected once again with myself. I reconnected once again with me.
With the theme of mirrors in my life, I learned to mirror myself. I learned to see the best of myself and the worst of myself in terms of reflection. I saw my emotions, and I realized through my own reflection how I experienced those emotions. I didn’t always like the reflection I saw, and those were the times that I realized that I needed to work on myself to change the things about myself that I didn’t like. It shouldn’t have mattered so much about what others thought of me; it should have mattered more about what I thought and knew of me. Now, I want to be the best version of myself, and I want to be the best reflection that I can be of me.
In a world of narcissism, does the narcissist like the mirrored image of themselves or does the narcissist prefer the mirrored image of somebody else?
My Voice Unchained 