Some days, I won’t be able to pull myself away from the mirror. I will fixate on every single detail, hoping I’ll see something different if I exaggerate the angle of my looking, if I can side eye the mirror so expertly that I see myself fully in profile, see me for who I truly am.
Other days, I will ban myself from looking because ‘you’re an ugly fucking cunt and people that look like you shouldn’t be allowed to own mirrors. And people that look like you shouldn’t be allowed to look like they’ve tried – like they’ve looked in the mirror and tried – because the people around them will wince when they see them and see that they’ve tried’.
And some days, I will do everything I can to avoid the mirror because I know looking will only make me sad. And those days are quite freeing, truth be told, so I will consider doing this avoiding thing more often. That feeling is gone and forgotten by the morning because mirrors can be quite addictive.
And other days, I will look with resignation and say ‘well, this is it. This is me’, and will go about my day with an abandon I didn’t know I could muster.
Some days, I will look and hear mum say, ‘try not to waste too much time looking today, darling.’
And, sometimes, I will look at the mirror with a face like thunder. I will want to smash it, to give it not a second more of my attention. On those days, I wish mirrors didn’t exist – wish that we would never, ever have to see ourselves, and what we look like, ever again. That feeling, too, is gone and forgotten by the morning because the mirror will be scalding me for my outburst.
Now and again, I will look the mirror straight in the eye and sing I’ll Be Your Mirror. The mirror’s pretty quiet after that.
And again and now, I will try and reason with the mirror. ‘Please, give me a break today’, I will say, and sometimes the mirror listens.
And then there are these odd, weird days when I will look in the mirror and see something a bit different, a bit more palatable. Those are sweet days, and I try to string together as many of those days as I can, and I hope today will be one of those days.
*****
Jonnie Felton – Glasgow via Cardiff, Sheffield and London.