Mirror Mirror

When I bought my now ancient iPhone 3G in 2009 I had the option to buy a screen cover that was a mirror. My immediate thought was, "who would need that?" I don't carry a mirror around with me and it didn't even occur to me that at some point during the day I might want to check my reflection. I chose to get the basic screen cover. Since then I have thought about that choice more often then I thought I would. There have been moments I needed a mirror and I flash to standing in the AT&T store and mentally slap myself for not upgrading to the mirror option. But just because I don't hold a mirror to myself doesn't keep other people from doing it for me.

Mirrors are vital to bettering ourselves. We can do reps for hours but until we look in the mirror and see how we may be adjusting a different muscle group to make the rep easier, we won't know we're doing it. We can blindly, and happily, walk around the city all day, but without the reflection in the shop window showing us we actually have bed hair and mismatched socks we will continue to think we look amazing. Our habits, our daily life, is just our perception until we get that mirror held up to us. Sometimes by force.

Recently I was made aware of my habit to punish an innocent party because of someone else's treatment of me. He pretty much said, "I can't spend my life apologizing for what he did to you."

Talk about a lightbulb moment.

I don't really have a lot to say about that except that he's right and I was taken aback by how succinctly and with razor-sharp accuracy he called me out. I have thought about that sentence a lot in the past week. (And he'll tell you, I might not have remembered it correctly but the gist is there.) I don't want to force my future boyfriends/fiancées/husbands make up for how poorly I was treated for the better part of 6 years. I don't want to spend my life trying to figure out where I went wrong and how is it different this time. I don't want to compare. I don't want to assume. I don't want to do what I've been doing because it hasn't worked so far.

So, for those of you who follow this blog and know I work on myself every day, I have vowed to hold up more mirrors to myself. I will probably still leave the house with bed-head and mismatched socks. But I will not ask someone who wasn't there, who cares for me for who I am now, to fix what someone else heartlessly broke. And I won't spend my life trying to make it "different this time" so it's better. It's already better.

More mirrors, less heartache. Who's in?