This Is My Life

I find myself looking for answers. Again. The questions I have are swirling around my mind in an endless pattern of doubts and fears that I can’t even explain anymore. I think I used to know what I wanted from life but now I’m not so sure. I used to have a confidence that radiated from me, making me feel invincible and happy even when I was scared and sad. What scares me the most now is that I don’t even know who I am anymore. I used to look in the mirror, confident that the person looking back was someone that I knew and could trust but now I look at a complete stranger who is confused at the person looking back at her in the reflection.1

The memories of a happiness flow through me, changing who I thought I would become to who I have become with a simple twist of fate. It seems to laugh at me in a way both taunting and mocking as if to say, ‘did you really think you were safe inside your mind?’ What a strange being I have become, to figure out that safety lays not inside my own mind anymore, a refuge I once thought I have. But now refuge lies outside my mind, far away from the threats that only I can perceive and know.2

I stand up and look through the glass window to the world looking back inside at me. These four walls make me feel so small and empty as I look past the glass to the staring faces so accusing in their glares. They watch warily, hoping that I will do something that will cause them to rebel against me. But it is going to be rebelling against them. What I know is that I am stronger than any of their stares, any of their mental weapons with which the aim to bring me down. Submission was never one of my good traits, and it won’t become one now. 3

The palm pressed to the glass is some indication that I still exist because when I bring my hand away, there is residue of water left on the glass, fading as it evaporates into the air. As my hand rises again to the glass I lean forward until my forehead rests against the cool glass. My vision seems to bend as I look down through the glass, focusing my gaze on the tile floor. The cracks seem to grow bigger as my eyes search it for some shape that I know is not there. 4

Movement on the other side of the glass makes me flinch and snap my vision to what’s on the other side of this window. A woman is standing on the other side, her palm pressed to the glass exactly on the other side of mine. I pull my hand back from the glass and stumble backwards, my feet sliding over the tile floor as I crouch on the floor, staring at the other being who dared to disturb my solitude. 5

As I watch, she lets her hand fall in defeat, almost as if she is sad that her touch can’t reach me through the window. She looks familiar and I wonder why, until I remember that she is my mother. I turn away in shame because I don’t want her to see me in this prison. But I can’t get away from her sad face. No matter where I turn, I see her in the walls.6

As I start to scream because I can’t get the images away, I realize that this is just inside my head, that I am not on the other side of a window, and that my mother is not pressing her palm against mine through glass, that she never can do that. 7

I sit up, panting because this dream has left me feeling drained and scared. I don’t know my mother, why should I dream about a woman who looks like her? I realize that the woman in my dream is me, later in life. I only call her my mother because she is the only one who has been there for me, through everything. And no matter how much I try to deny it, I am alone. 8

This is my life.9