The Mirror

Never trust a mirror,

For a mirror always lies,

It makes you think that all you're worth,

Can be seen from the outside,

Never trust a mirror.

It only shows you what's skin deep,

You can't see how your eyelids flutter,

When you're drifting off to sleep,

It doesn't show you what the world sees,

When you're only being you,

Or how your eyes light up,

When you're loving what you do,

It doesn't capture when you're smiling,

When no one else can see,

And your reflection cannot tell you,

Everything you mean to me,

Never trust a mirror,

For it only shows your skin,

And if you think that dictates your worth,

It's time you looked within.

~Erin Hanson

Someone posted this on a burn survivor page I'm in on facebook today and I remember reading it a long time ago but when I read it again today, I felt a different feeling towards it.  It can connect to so many readers who don't like what they see in the mirror but I think it really connects to people who have been physically damaged, disfigured.  And the reason I say that is because I know personally, from being physically damaged, disfigured and marred with scars and when I look in the mirror, I don't recognize myself from the girl I was physically before the burn.  It's hard to see anything but the my disfigurement and scars when I look in the mirror now.  The scars and disfigurement are so powerful that I can't see beyond the physical in the mirror to what's deeper.  It's so powerful that it's overwhelming and I avoid mirrors at all costs because I feel like me on the inside, but when I look in a mirror, I don't see me anymore.  I'm conflicted with what the mirror shows me and what I feel on the inside.  And so, it is quite fitting when Hanson says that a mirror only makes you think that all you're worth is seen on from the outside.  That's what I feel and see when I look in the mirror.  I see ugly.  I see someone who will never be loved by another.  I see failure.  And because what I see is so powerful, it can make me feel it, too.  Right now, unfortunately, I do trust that mirror.  I trust it and I believe it.  I don't yet trust and believe the better things I feel inside.  Trusting and believing those things weigh me down and like Marilyn Monroe once said, the bad are much heavier to carry.  I need to perhaps read this every day so that maybe I'll start believing in the good things inside me that you can't see in the mirror.  I need to believe that the mirror only shows my skin and not what I'm worth.  I'm just not there yet.  I hope I am someday, though.  I'm tired of being weighed down by negative thoughts and images of myself.  I want to someday look in the mirror and see what I feel on the inside and, most of all, believe it.