It wasn't that it was so strange to see my sister get up three times during a lunch out, to run to the bathroom and check her image, but that as her nervous break down progressed she became convinced she didn't really exist with out validation from a mirror. Sure I was guilty too. As a recent "Whole Living" magazine article pointed out, I was as guilty as the next person of making a special mirror face that sunk my cheeks in just a little more, plumped my lips into a sensual pout and morphed my eye lids to look more exotic. Time to time when I had an extreme emotion I checked the mirror to see if what I was feeling was validated. And of course, pictures were always "bad" as they never showed the lady I saw in the mirror.
MIRROR GAZING AND VANITY. OR IS IT?
During my sister's nervous breakdown she seemed to at first go into an Alice in Wonderland world, where her reflected image was always a friend on the "other side" there waiting for her no matter what. But soon she was screaming in pain at the insult her mirror image displayed as the wear and tear of her emotional crisis grew deeper. When the mirror she so trusted to be predictable, began to show her pale sleepless anxiety and unpredictable weight changes, it was as if she became the daughter of a cold dominating figure that never had a good word to say about her. Like an abused child, she kept reaching for the mirror to see if it had changed her mind about her. But of course, she was confronting the punisher within, herself, her own worst enemy.
SHE SAW THE ENEMY WITHIN
I began to see that my sisters stays in the bathroom became longer and longer. Like the evil queen of Snow White, the mirror never had a good thing to say about her and there was never enough mascara, high lighter and hair product to take away the ugly she felt inside. Instead of staying away from mirrors, she obsessively checked to see if the enemy reflection, lurked within the mirror. She searched like a mother for a lost child, for her old self, the pretty girl. And though she was a beautiful girl, and ogled by every guy around, she found all validation of her self worth through the mirror.
I am happy to say that my sister after years of counseling has healed and her psychosis and addiction to mirrors has mellowed. Now, together, you may find us in a department store making our silly mirror faces and laughing at each other hilariously. The mirror is my sisters friend again. But like any addiction she knows her boundaries.
