Your challenge today is to explore mirrors (or reflections).

It was Sylvia Plath who wrote what was for me the definitive poem about mirrors.*

They look back at you defining a truth from which you can’t deny.

The lines on your face are there for you to see, the colour of your hair if you still have any is not the colour it once was.

No matter how you try to disguise, it represents a truth from which there is no escape.

It’s true that often we look in the mirror and see a stranger staring back at us. Who is that man I often ask? What happened to the boy? The young man? Where did his dreams go?

While our external self-changes the internal self bears the burden of changes we don’t always live up to. Many of our life experiences we live in denial of.

The wrongs we committed. The times we let loved ones down. The times when our dreams were little more than pie in the sky.

I lived a life mostly in my head. It was a fantasy, some might say it still is, but it was my way of dealing with the everyday. On my back burner were the terrors of a past best left in a place where they could fester and raise their ugly heads.

On the outside, a good man gave an air of control and thought he was in control of his life.

Inside he was crying, hoping against all hope he might one day be rescued but knowing it was only himself was going to bring about any rescue.

Then he stepped out of himself, looked beyond the mirror and found he could still breathe life.

*https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Mirror-by-Sylvia-Plath

Written for: Daily Writing Challenge #7