The Mirror

 The Mirror


I hadn’t realized how much I had changed — or maybe, how quietly I had drifted from the person I once was.

It took someone I barely know, but who felt instantly familiar, to show me.


When I think back to my younger self, I see a boy trying to fit in — somewhere between high school sports and drama club and music rehearsals. I wasn’t the best at any of them, but I loved being part of them. I joined not because I was pushed or needed approval, but because they made me feel alive.


Somewhere along the way, that feeling faded.

When did I become lazy? When did I start waiting for things to happen instead of making them happen?

When did I stop seeking love, and decide that being merely content was enough?

When did I stop looking in the mirror and smiling at who I saw?


I’ve settled, often out of fear. Fear of loss, of rejection, of failure. Fear that life would demand more than I had left to give.

When I was sick — kidneys failing, life uncertain — I stopped reaching out. I didn’t date. I stopped caring about how I looked or moved or felt. I told myself survival was enough.

And maybe it was, then. But survival is not living.


I made choices — sudden moves, abrupt shifts — that I told myself were freedom, but maybe they were flight. I’ve kept moving ever since. No roots. No history. No place.

And yet, I do have a home. A partner. Two dogs whose love is simple and unconditional. A life I built with steadiness and care.


Still, one unexpected connection cracked something open in me — a light through old dust. Joy. Companionship. Curiosity. The ache of wanting more.

It wasn’t about him, not really. It was about what I felt because of him — the recognition of the part of me that still longs, still reaches, still hopes.


Maybe that’s what growing is: realizing that we never lose our younger selves; we just forget where we left them.

And sometimes, if we’re lucky, someone comes along and quietly hands us the mirror again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How America used to be....

Warning: This is a politically charged post. Let me just say that upfront. This isn't meant to be partisan, but I know some will take it that way. That’s not my intention. What I’m trying to do here is remind myself of who I am as an American—and what that’s supposed to mean. So much is changing, and it’s happening fast. The lines blur. This is me trying to hold onto what I know to be true, or at least what I  thought  was true. I was born in Seattle to parents who were also born in Seattle. I was adopted and raised by a Washington-born father and a Minnesota-born mother—both white. I say that up front because I want to shut down any “anchor baby” or “they must’ve been immigrants” assumptions. My birth parents were third-generation Irish-American. My adoptive father was a third-generation Englishman. My mother was third-generation German-Norwegian-American. I grew up in a Lutheran home, taught that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that the Ten Commandments were a guide to l...
Read more

Dream

Night lays a hand on the window, and the kettle hums its small promise. I set my phone face-down, listen to the dogs settle, and breathe until the room remembers me.  Outside, leaves loosen their grip without regret. Inside, I practice the same—opening my palm, not to let go of anything in particular, but to stop clutching at shadows left behind by thoughts. Somewhere between the whistle of the kettle and the quiet after, a truth arrives without knocking: I am allowed to want a life that answers back. The clock ticks its small permission as I slip into bed—naked to the night, like the day I was born. I close my eyes and feel the dogs’ warm weight as they turn, find their circles of comfort, and drift; I follow them into a dream where I walk alone down a windy cobblestone street, looking side to side for light, for warmth, for love. In the distance a soft glow erodes the darkness, slowly roiling toward me along the stones, and through its golden shroud I see bountiful trees and tall...
Read more

A Thief Named Time

 “Time is a thief,” I say to the window, fogged by my breath and the steam from my coffee. “It steals your thoughts, emotions, and youth.” “Hey,” the waiter says, topping me off. “We don’t get many thieves in here before noon.” “I’m serious,” I reply. “Time passes in the blink of an eye. You turn around and twenty years have passed.” A chair across from me scrapes. A man in a well-worn coat slides in without asking. His watch has no hands. “Name’s Time,” he says. “I pay in memory.” “Figures,” I mutter. “Hair a little thinner, laugh lines deeper, and crow’s feet around the eyes. Yet my mind still sees a bright, exuberant twenty-something kid who has the rest of his life in front of him.” Time smiles, gentle, almost apologetic. “I didn’t take your brightness. I just… traded it for texture.” “I enter into shock when I look in the mirror,” I say, “to see a face looking back at me that I don’t recognize. How do I make peace with that?” “Talk to the mirror,” Time says. “It talks back whe...
Read more