Mirror Eyes

A dynamic photograph that never portrays the same picture twice, a mirror is smooth and clear as crystal. But handle with care for when it breaks, no existing miracle glue can put the pieces back together exactly the way it was. Life is like that. You can hope for a broken friendship to mend, but the scar is a keloid. It will sting again sometimes. You can forgive a million times, but you know there will always be a million cracks now in the mirror that is you. For what are we but a reflection of the world we live in? Of the world that lives in us? Of the people who look at us and see themselves? Or see an image of us they wish to see? Of our hopes mostly unrealized? Of our fears? Of our nightmares?

How can someone at twenty three possibly have a heart disease? And not care? And not worry that the next time his blood pressure rises, his arteries just might pop like that old gaffer at the ER who never had time to say goodbye to his wife? Like that old schizophrenic lady at the ICU whose husband devotedly guards like a lonely sentinel in the hospital corridors? Trying to be strong but is actually helpless. Had she tried to say “I love you”, had he understood? Or had he perhaps mistook it for another one of the schizophrenic grumbles he’d been hearing from her this past nine years?

Young people feel immortal in their prime, don’t they? No matter how we condemn his principles, Freud has struck true again. Eros is supreme and thanatos a myth to the twenty three year old who believes he is as indestructible as a ten thousand year old oak tree. Sometimes, he forgets, that the reason why he feels strong is that underneath him, there are so many who would gladly break down so he could remain in tact. To throw their mirrors to the ground so that his will no longer be broken.

I dreamt of death one night and discovered that I am as guilty of the denial of thanatos. I think of other people’s deaths but not my own. As though it were as remote as the horizon. That it will never arrive. And what with internship teaching you to be anesthesized, else, you risk clear headedness in the face of an emergency. You become numb in the face of death. Unfeeling. As dead in your heart as the person you’re trying to revive. Then when it’s all over, your soul comes back to you, as though you made it run to hide away from the tragedy it will one day face itself. And then you break down in a corner. Alone. Needing none but the company of your own fears suddenly realized. And then just as suddenly pushed back into the farthest recesses of your mind when your resident doctor hollers your name.

I also dreamt of love. Of broken hearts. Of broken promises. Of broken friendships. Of broken dreams. So much destruction with a four letter word. A war of the souls. More deadly than the bombs that are said to rain on Iraq. More penetrating than the tubes we probe into unwilling patients who otherwise cannot breathe. But you rise from the rubble after the battle is done. Have we lost? Have we won? Does it matter?

I don’t know.

I just know my life has become complicated. I just know my heart has never been more alive. I just know that the constant churning in my insides is a bodily form of some deep, disturbing emotion awakened like a dragon, aflame and burning. I just know that I have become a different person from the silly girl who once began this quest. I also know, with such realization, that I am exactly where I was when all this began. Standing in the middle of rubble, broken down by the torrents of people’s emotions. Trying to make out what the world has become. Trying to see where life is trying to lead me.

Angry at the twenty three year old who would not take his medications. Furious that he refuses to see what he, himself, blows his head off trying to explain to the hard headed old man in the ER who suffers the same ailment as he. Did they reflect each other’s mirror? Or were they hiding behind it? Where no reflection at all is held?

I looked him in the eye for a blistering confrontation, and was startled to see that his mirror has been broken a thousand times more than mine. Glittering with a thousand reflections. Casting its light on a thousand surfaces where only the keen could notice that parts of a star has landed there.

It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Mirrors unbroken could reflect only one image. Could see only one moment at a time. But shattered glass could reflect a thousand perspectives. Beyond the obvious. Ragged and broken, but wiser now to the harshness of the world. Unafraid now, of death. Untroubled by the uncomfortable truths that cannot anyway be helped. And beautiful…

And beautiful….

When I looked around me I realized there were so many of us, broken mirrors. Broken by the turmoil of ill health. Shattered by hearts stopping beneath our palms. Belittled by the reprimands of seemingly awesome seniority. Confused by the crazed grumblings of people who have been lost in themselves, trying to make sense of the world that cannot understand them. Crumbling, sometimes, when it seems that our own inner battles cannot be won.

But beautiful in our brokenness. Reflecting each other’s light when one of us seemed to flicker. Laughing louder because our brokenness provided more surfaces from which laugher could resonate. More appreciative of the sunrise because of the many sunrises we have missed while trapped in some white-walled room half-hopeful that with the sun came rest. Feeling more alive in the face of pain because of the altogether hundred birthings we have witnessed and took part in. Blissful about rainbows because the whiteness of our everyday garb has become somewhat bland, jaded like our souls, and at times even fearful to the children who once believed white was the color of angels.

And when it was all over, there were a thousand smiles reflected in everyone’s broken pieces. So many photographs to be remembered and each one a prism of invisible blinding light bouncing off from smiles that are otherwise meaningless, graceful combinations of muscular contractions and chemical reactions. In the end, there was too much to be said. To be left unsaid.

And four years ended up all summarized in a sigh….

With only a technological window that opens up with a click of a finger to bind them all now. Like a magic mirror that suddenly reveals new images of the different worlds they have all chosen for themselves.

And after that, a glitz. And the window closes. And then the screen turns black. Because now we know that the world is full of mirrors.

Whole in their brokenness.

Written May 156, 2007