Why Does It Reflect?

When I moved into my new place, I never anticipated mirrors being a big part of it. Yet I have several that are here, none of which are mine; they came with the apartment.

I'm used to living with people, this is my first time living alone. And that exacerbates the feeling of loneliness I already struggle with. I'm not a very social person, but I have a friend group. People from college. It's still small enough to count em on both hands. Even though I don't want to be social all the time I still crave social interaction. I want to have conversation, I want to talk. Yet my days consist of me going to work and then coming home and just fumbling around my apartment until it's time to go to sleep.

So whenever I catch my reflection in one of the mirrors, it makes me so much more aware.

I feel like I'm wasting my life but it doesn't help that I don't know what I want. I'm 21, I figured I would be at a point where I could see a roadmap of where my life is going. Don't get me wrong I love my job, being a frontend developer at a job where I actually *love* my coworkers is fantastic. Yet I don't feel like I'm an actual person outside of work. I'm in this weird stage where I have to actually discover myself now that I have the time to, and it's kinda terrifying.

Hearing other people speak and share their experiences really shows two things. How socially inept I am and how I am so inexperienced and non-worldly. Everyone always seems to be in the know of something going on or always have some sort of plan happening. I have weekly Magic sessions on Sunday, that's really it. (Don't get me wrong I absolutely LOVE those sessions with my friends.) It's so hard to articulate and explain how I'm feeling. It's this feeling of inadequacy and the want to do more, but I'm either too anxious to do anything or don't have the resources to do the things I want.

I have two mirrors. One is a very large mirror that's in this little nook in the living room, and the other one is a small one in my bathroom. The large mirror is the one I always catch myself offguard with. I see myself in it and start to overthink, or the persistent ache in my soul/body (it's felt physically too) grows and suddenly I'm so aware of it. Then of course the small mirror I choose to deliberately look in. Yet most of my interactions with it consist of me becoming nitpicky, staring too long at my face or inspecting my scalp because I have a spiraling dandruff issue I am so hyperaware of and it drives me insane. Can you sense the theme here? I'm so aware all the time. I know x y z is wrong or me doing x y z isn't the best way to live my life, and yet I still am living this way. I'm trying to make changes, but I do just feel stuck.

I want to reach a point where I feel good about where I'm at. Past me had been DREAMING of this moment. Where I finally graduated college and had a stable job and I had my own place by myself. I love being independent, but also man do I feel like I am fucking it up SO bad. I've only been at this place for 2 weeks for crying out loud. I don't know the correct way to function. I mean I can handle myself, clean up and cook, the normal human activities. But growing as a person? Carving out hobbies? Extremely difficult. I mean I have hobbies like playing video games and drawing, but man do I want some that's not just staring at a screen all day. I do fear that is a big portion of what's wrong. That I spend so much of my time just staring at a screen for entertainment, and it creates this awful brainfog and wears at my creativity and want to do anything else.

I just want to reach a point where I can look at myself and feel good. I wanna go a day where I simply feel good and there's no consequence. No mental backlash where there's invisible hands trying to drag me down the abyss that is the depression spiral. Where I can just face the mirrors with no problem. Without the need to nitpick or ache because how dare a reflective piece of glass be placed there? And I know alot of people feel the same way, we all just want to feel good don't we? Bare minimum desire of the human experience.

Mirrors make me too self-aware, all the time. And I would love to have a day where that doesn't happen. Though I fear it will be a very long time before then.

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.” ― Charles Bukowski