His Face in My Mirror
Reflections on who we leave behind, and what we take with us.
I stare into the mirror and notice that my face looks rounder. There are imperfections that weren’t there a couple of years ago.
“You look tired,” I say to myself, “and your teeth look a bit yellow.”
The face in the mirror laughs, only I hadn’t done anything of the sort. The movement, my reflection seemingly moving by its own volition, makes me freeze. But that isn’t me, actually, and that isn’t a mirror, either. It’s a face, and while it isn’t mine, I could have sworn it looked just like me.
I’ve been staring for too long. The face — the man — smiles, and I’m taken aback. His soft blue eyes shimmer in the dim light of his bedroom. His hands trace lines across my skin.
“I really like spending time with you,” he says.
I smile, too, but then I start to cry. I want to say something back, something romantic or charming, and his eyes swim with understanding. He pulls me closer to him, lets me press my face into his chest, and I feel for the second time in as many months like I might not have to hide this part of me from him.
When we eventually say our goodbyes, he goes from lying in bed beside me to lounging in my mind. I see him everywhere, in everything. I wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, and whether or not I’m taking up space in his mind as well.
I drive home carefully, wanting to wake up tomorrow and see what it has in store. Because I see his eyes in the headlights that pass, and I feel his lips in every word coming through the radio.
Like a clap of thunder, he is a reverberation. And I am the same for him, I think. His growing presence in my life shows me visions, little flashes of a bigger something coming into focus. Where others have leaned away, he is leaning in, talking to me for hours and imploring me to tell him more.
“I want to understand,” he says to me, while wiping away my shame-soaked tears. “I want to be here for you.”
I do tell him more, or at least I try. I let him see me, even if some of it isn’t pretty. He does the same.
“Sometimes I worry that I’m just like my dad.”
“Sometimes I don’t feel good enough.”
“Sometimes I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
I listen when he says things. And when he’s crying, too — letting me see him even when he maybe didn’t intend to — I hold him close.
“We are not them,” I say.
We both have people in our lives who have shown us the damage that unwieldy emotion can cause. We have both seen what damage even the most fleeting of feelings can cause. It has made us both afraid, but together we are finding bravery and strength.
At some point, we stop counting the number of dates we’ve been on, and start counting in years. For the first time in my life, I learn what it means to really, truly be in love. It isn’t the same as when we first met. He doesn’t just lounge in my mind, he’s moved in. I no long think in the singular, but in the plural.
He loves me, too. I see it in the way he looks at me, and in the words he speaks. I see it in his actions, and in the way we stay together. We listen to each other when we say “that hurt” — the way we sometimes have to, when the years make it easy to say and do things we don’t mean.
But there are things that don’t make sense. Things I notice that he brushes off. Flickers of someone I don’t know in his eyes, someone I don’t think he knows, either. Someone who lies to both of us. Someone who becomes our undoing.
I don’t have to tell this stranger that he hurt me, because he knew he would. That’s why he tried to hide him from me. That’s why it took him so many years to drag him out of the darkness, set him down on our living room floor, and finally show me.
“I think we both need to look at this,” his confession seemed to say.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t see it coming. I know him, after all, and I know the things he struggles with, but I don’t know how to reconcile the reality from the fiction. I don’t know how to separate the man I thought I knew from the man he really was, the one who told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, but had already been giving himself away to others. I don’t know how to make sense of his lack of courage, pity, or love enough for me to even tell me that it happened. To give me any kind of say.
He was just a mirror.
I was just a face.
At least that’s how it feels.
Now, I know why I saw so much of myself in him. It’s hard not to look back and see anything but the reflection, that shiny surface beneath which he hid a part of himself. That mesmerizing, dazzling smile that I thought I knew, but never really did. It’s hard not to think that it was all just a lie — everything. Like all he was ever really doing was telling me what I wanted to hear, letting me believe that he was someone I could trust.
I believe him when he says he was lying to himself, too, but I won’t let sympathy turn to empathy. Letting myself, even for a moment, try to understand his side of things feels wrong. He made those choices, not me. He told those lies, not me.
How do I know where the lies begin and end?
How do I know he isn’t lying about this, too?
“I’m so sorry I hurt you,” he told me the last time we ever saw each other. There were tears in his blue eyes, my letter in his hands. “I really did love you. I always have, and I always will.“
It’s easy to believe him, but it’s hard for me to look at him, because all I see is the stranger. He displays remorse, and I feel pity, but then I’m right back in the front yard of my childhood home, picking up my things from the curb. Because the people I’ve loved most in this life have an awful habit of throwing me out, and I won’t let him do it, too. They at least did it out loud. She at least taught me how to show up for myself. And even though I thought he’d show up for me, too, I’ll do what I’ve always done and learn once more how do it for myself.
His silence makes it hard to put the love in a box. But I’m looking in the mirror. I’m facing me, fully. I’m telling myself sorry. I’m holding myself while I cry.
And I try to be thankful for his honesty, because it’s better late than never.
And I try to forgive him for making me look at myself differently.