Fractured Reflections

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own.

Admittedly, I didn’t usually look. A part of being autistic is that I don’t really see eyes. I have to stare deeply & with great intent just to discern their color. To do so isn’t easy & it takes some time, which heightens the risk of me getting caught. That’s frightening, to the point of being almost paralyzing for me. I only rarely look at eyes. Perhaps the bridge of the nose, the space between the eyebrows, the lips or tip of a cheekbone, but almost never the eyes. Not even mine.

As a child, my mother had noticed this aversion & had warned me, “If you don’t look people in the eyes, they’ll think you’re lying.” So, I learned to compensate, to make it appear as though I was looking when I really wasn’t. Believe me, if I actually did look someone in the eye, it was not an act of truth-telling but of defiance. If I got my back up, you might have seen me peering fiercely into yours, but it was with arrows, not hearts, & it meant you didn’t want to cross me because I wasn’t going to back down. I was a beast trapped in a corner of my own making with only one way out—through you—& I was going to claw my way out no matter how right or wrong I was.

It's not a look I wanted staring back at me. I rarely believed I could bear it. When I tried, I found I could stand up to it only briefly. Check the hair, that there was nothing gross hanging around my nostrils, that my face was clean, but don’t even glimpse at the eyes.

So today, when I did, it frightened me. The face staring back couldn’t be mine. It looked normal, perhaps in its own way, even slightly confident & handsome. That face was one to which I could imagine someone might be drawn, like, possibly even love.

That wasn’t me. If that face was mine, I might once again discover I could believe in myself & the possibility of a good tomorrow. But decades worth of hope disappointed had driven that far from me. People were never drawn. And I could never compete for their attention. Conversations were always strained, especially those which were casual. For me, witty repartee was no more than riffing with bad puns while my mind tried to catch up & understand what others were saying. I was awkward, which made them feel awkward, which made the whole thing just awkward.

I learned this early on with my brothers. They moved easily through social circles, weaving in & out of conversations with the grace & majesty of eagles soaring through the sky. I could not climb to their heights, not even when I was just with them. The only attention I could ever remember commanding was from those who were receiving none, for the moment, from my brothers.

And it told me unequivocally, “You’re not worthy.” I might face social situations while maintaining a brave front. I might even survive them. But I did so as counterfeit, made bold only with pretense, as one who didn’t belong. After, & without fail, I beat myself up for how poorly I had performed & how foolish I’d been.

That was what brought me to the bathroom mirror today. Exhausted, ashamed, leaning against the sink, ready to berate myself for the idiot I had been & was & always would be, I looked up.

What I saw in the mirror stopped me. No, that wasn’t me, that was not my reflection. That’s not what others saw when they looked at me. They saw & always will see what I feel inside. They know I’m not good enough, not worth their time or notice. They see me as I see myself, not as that.

I dropped my head, washed my hands, turned & walked out the door.

This is my fractured reflection,

what I feel inside though I know it’s not true,

just as I know that it is.