Distorted Reflections

“If you realize what the real problem is - losing yourself - you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial.” - Joseph Campbell

This is something old that I wanted to share with you all. It came from a time where I felt like I lost myself, which may give a little background for my Eat.Pray.Love Initiative. It's a scary place to be but I feel like its necessary at times to be lost, as a point of re-discovery. Hope you enjoy :)

Have you ever looked in the mirror and realized that you no longer recognized yourself?

The other day, I went to the mirror because I was a little sad and depressed about some things that had been going on recently. I wanted to see if I looked like I felt. To my surprise, when I got to the mirror I did not see me sad or depressed, because I didn’t see me. I stared into this face and saw someone who had been crying. She was sad and broken. She resembled a girl that I used to know. A girl who smiled in-between laughter and saved her tears for joy.

I glanced over the body and touched the face, the skin, the hands and cringed at the familiarity of it all. I had never been this close to a woman before, but it was like I knew her through and through. She reminded me of bubble baths and hot showers, where I would spend hours indulging in child-like thoughts. Still perplexed, I began to take all of her in. She was thin, grim, remorseful, and pained. I looked at her, feeling sorry for her, but I still could not understand why I felt so close to her. So conflicted and close to her.

This is where the suspense ends. Where I thought I would get deep and look in through her lens. Immediately, I froze. A tremble begins, to rise up my spine as I inched forward to confirm what I feared in my mind. She moved with me. I stopped. She stopped. I moved forward, she followed and it began to sink in, that when I looked in her eyes, it was me, trapped within. It was me.

I didn’t recognize myself. There were dark circles under my eyes, I couldn’t decipher myself. It was me. This girl that I spent so long critiquing, so long did I search for her soul, that wasn’t there. It was me, but I was gone. She didn’t carry me along her on the outside. No, she caged me crying out to reach her in the depths of her eyes, where she cried.

Where she cried because she couldn’t find me anymore. She cried because she had lost me and she didn’t know where she let me go. I screamed out to her inside, thinking that she could hear me but she couldn’t. She was deaf to her inner voice and blind to her soul. She was dead inside, yet steady walking around the world. Doing. Seeing. Being. Gone. I was gone.

The saddest part about losing yourself is that you can’t tell anyone where to find you. The saddest thing about being found is that you can’t tell anyone where you’d been to keep you from going again. I want to be found again. I want to be me again. I want to see the same smile that blossomed out of my turbulent adolescence and the same girl that triumphed over life’s unworthy stresses. So I wait. And wait. And wait to be found. As this girl carries me around. I think I know why the caged bird sings. If for nothing else, its to entice an ear to hear what has been captured within.