Mirrors

I walked into a completely empty apartment in Golden, Colorado. Empty, except for a full-length freestanding mirror propped up in the master bedroom closet.

I’ve avoided mirrors most of my life. Small ones, full-length ones, while clothed, definitely while unclothed. I don’t use them to put in my contacts or blow-dry my hair and thankfully I don’t wear make-up so that’s never been an issue. I’d paper over them or write in erasable marker on them to obscure the reflection. I even once had the mirror removed from my bathroom (that was a task in a rented apartment, lemme tell you).

tw: eating disorder, body image and body weight discussions (no numbers)

Nothing good came for me from staring in a mirror other than abject discomfort with myself.

It was easy to justify avoiding mirrors: that was better for my eating disorder recovery, right? Just like my aversion to scales (no weighing for me!) , a mirror aversion was also a “healthy” thing, I’d tell myself. There was no body checking, no picking myself apart, no scrutinizing.

Therapists asked if I avoided mirrors because I thought I was “too big.” “Oh gosh no,” I’d replied. As odd as this may sound to some people, body image and body dsymorphia never played a huge role in my eating disorder. If anything, at my lowest weights, I felt uncomfortable and hated what I saw. I didn’t want to be there.

So we all agreed there was nothing really wrong with me avoiding them. I didn’t think too much of it on a day to day basis.

Until I walked into that empty apartment.

Empty, because it was all mine. Empty, because it was supposed to be shared with my partner.

Two days earlier he had called and told me we were done.

Two days earlier, I was in San Jose, California waiting for the movers to arrive, wondering if they would still show up. Two days earlier, I was frantically packing up the last of my 600 square foot apartment, contemplating what I do with everything I needed to donate since all Salvation Army and Goodwill stores were closed. Two days earlier, I was cautiously hopeful about my life move to Colorado, which had been planned since January.

It was April 2020. And then my phone rang.

The movers were coming in a few hours. I had given my 60 days’ notice to my landlord. Hotels were shuttered. I had nowhere to go but Colorado. “Congrats, Amelia,” I thought to myself through the haze of shock, “you may be the first person in history moving across the country closer to an ex.”

My iPhone lit up as I crossed the state line into Utah, telling me I needed to fill out a form if I was traveling through the state in these “unprecedented times.” I silenced the notification and rationalized that since I didn’t plan to stop, so they would never know I was here. I drove the 20 hours from California to Colorado in one shot, in silence and numb.

I walked into my empty apartment, simultaneously exhausted and wired on too much caffeine, with just what I could cram into my little Honda Civic. Just me, an air mattress and sleeping bag and that mirror sitting in the empty closet.

I ignored that mirror for a few days as I moved through a world opaque and heavy with shock and grief. I tottered aimlessly from room to room in that apartment in a feeble attempt to replace the vision of what was “we” to what was now “me” in this space. And one day I stumbled into that walk-in closet and sat down in front of the mirror, exhausted and red-eyed, and looked at myself.

April 2020, where it began

Sitting in split shorts and a tank top, hugging my knees to my chest, I just stared in the mirror and cried. Cried until my face and neck were covered in salty streaks, until the snot from my nose had run down to my chest. Until the sobs quieted and surrender took over. Then I got up and left.

I did that the next day, and the day after that. And days turned into weeks, and I kept coming back into the closet to sit with myself in front of that mirror.

In a time where the world was in grief and we couldn’t hug or touch anyone (let alone be in the same room), I used that mirror to be with myself. Eventually the tears stopped flowing, and I sat with myself in quiet, staring into that mirror.

At first, all I felt was judgment and criticism towards that woman staring back at me in the mirror. But as I continued this practice, a new feeling took over: compassion. Compassion for the woman who sat in front of me. For what she’s been through. For how far she’s come. And the judgment began to melt away, replaced by a tenderness.

And I began to learn that I hadn’t avoided mirrors my whole life because of discomfort with my body: I avoided them because I was uncomfortable with being with myself.

I love others hard. I’m fiercely loyal and I don’t give up on people (sometimes to a fault). But for most of my life, I never pointed that inwards. I seek safety and security and love, but I’ve always sought that externally. And, for better or worse, nothing is secure when it involves external factors. Months in that closet taught me one thing: at the end of the day, I have myself - myself for the rest of my life.  That is the ONE thing in life that is certain. So I better make peace with that woman reflecting back at me in the mirror. And beyond making peace, love her ferociously.

That mirror in that empty apartment in April 2020 was where I started.

It traveled with me to the house that I bought here in Golden several months later. I continued to sit in front of it daily as I healed and as I started to build a new life and a new community around me. It sits in my bedroom now (not the closet!), and on days when I need some extra tenderness, I still sit in front of it.

But now, I admire the woman in front of me: for what she’s been through, what she’s healed from, how she shows up in life, and for where she’s headed. She’ll be with me until the day I die, and I no longer want or need to avoid that.