Absolute Beauty

We’ve all heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do you agree? is all beauty contingent on a subjective point of view?

One of my friends told me about a conversation he had recently had with a woman about beauty.

She said men age with grace and that women turn into hags.

Hags.

Hag is such a bitter angry little word.

When I was young I was told I didn’t have much going for me in the face department so I should probably think about developing a talent.

I chose writing. And resigned myself to wearing a bag over my head- actually I spent a lot of time looking down. Same thing.

But on my worst day I don’t think I’d compare myself to a Hag.

Besides, I did spent a lot of time doing things where I didn’t have to worry about my lack of good looks.

I write, which is something that I do love to do. I rode motorcycles, I worked in a funeral home, I traveled. So I guess that was good. But I did most of those things alone.

But there has been a down side to my way of thinking and it’s a strange one.

I hate mirrors. I loath them. It doesn’t suprise me that there are so many superstitions about them:

… Mirror Superstitions:

• To see your reflection in a mirror is to see your own soul, which is why a vampire, who are without a soul, have no reflection.
• If a couple first catch sight of each other in a mirror, they will have a happy marriage.
• If a mirror falls and breaks by itself, someone in the house will soon die.
• Any mirrors in a room where someone has recently died, must be covered so that the dead person’s soul does not get trapped behind the glass. Superstition has it that the Devil invented mirrors for this very purpose.
• It is bad luck to see your face in a mirror when sitting by candlelight.
• Before mirrors, in ancient societies, if you caught sight of your reflection or dreamt of it, you would soon die.
• Someone seeing their reflection in a room where someone has recently died, will soon die themselves.
• Babies should not look into a mirror for the first year of their lives.
• Actors believe that it is bad luck to see their reflection while looking over the shoulder of another person.
• To see an image of her future husband, a woman is told to eat an apple while sitting in front of a mirror and then brush her hair. An image of the man will appear behind her shoulder

I bought my first full length mirror a month ago- and I’m almost 50 years old.

Mirrors  creep me out. I hate them. I hate that I get judged by a reflection they capture – be it the one I see myself or the one other people see.

What angers me is that the image I cast determines who will love me, if they’ll be kind to me or not, if I’ll be treated with courtesy or disdain.

Because of a reflection.

Years ago I had one of those scream myself awake nightmares.

I was walking through my house and it was full of mirrors. There were heavy ornate mirrors, cheap ones, mirrors with no frames broken dusty mirrors and hand mirrors.

I went from mirror to mirror and I saw…nothing…I didn’t cast a reflection. I couldn’t see myself in any of those thousand of mirrors.

I started ran from mirror to mirror in a panic and I was shouting, ” I’m here. Why can’t any of you see me…I’m here!”

I was trapped in this house with mirrors and because I didn’t have a reflection I felt like I wasn’t real.

Like I didn’t exist.

Is it possible to be less of a person when nobody ‘beholds’ your beauty? Do you get to be real?

More real then a reflection?

I wonder.