girl, you’ll be a ..
i stepped from the sidewalk into the revolving door of my building and caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the smooth approaching glass to my left. on most days, i see a girl, playing dress-up as an adult. usually there’s a droop in the eyes from too much computer-staring by day, late-nighting by night. usually, the hair is tousled [as described by others] and shapeless [described by me]. usually, a sweater of some kind, khakis or jeans or a skirt, a dark wool coat, perhaps a chirpily-colored scarf. usually when i catch this sliding reflection she’s a girl.
today she surprised me. today she looked like someone completely unknown to me. today, in the nanosecond before my brain registered it’s sense of self, i thought, who’s that woman? perhaps its the red lipstick and the flushed cheeks. perhaps it’s that my hair suddenly looks stylish and carefree as opposed to the usual helmet of stubborn waves. perhaps it’s my mother’s pearls around my neck, or the fur collar on my black coat. whatever prompts it, i’m suddenly struck by the fact that i’m a woman. a woman that the girl-krissa might have looked at, six years ago, and thought beautiful.
i struggle, often, with the fact that my self-perception caught a snag at seventeen and stayed there. some days, i almost don’t recognize myself in the mirror, expecting instead a fresh faced, wide-eyed, innocent girl. i always feel a seedling of disappointment when friends look at pictures of that seventeen year old girl and say, oh my god you looked different then. i know they’re not seeing physical differences – i have the same colored hair, if shorter and curlier, the same big eyes, the same mouth and give or take twenty pounds, the same curvy petite frame. it’s not that, then, that we see in those pictures. it’s a youth, a carefree childishness and innocence, that mocks me from the past.
i’ve grown up so much since then that while my smile remains the same, the knowledge in my eyes is different. and perhaps because of that, it’s sometimes difficult to face what i see in the mirror, or in current photographs. sometimes i see sadness flicker across my eyes. my smile isn’t always as wide as it once was, my joy and vigor no longer quite on the sleeve but more reserved, saved for real moments of happiness. so sometimes, the current-me doesn’t even look like my own ideas of who i am, lodged stubbornly at seventeen and constantly comparing backwards.
but what is self-perception, anyway, except a projection of who you think you are, mirrored back at you? do i really think of myself as a less-happy shadow of my former innocent self? am i doomed to spend life wishing i still had that carefree perfection? is ignorance bliss?
but then, for no reason at all, there was that beautiful woman in the passing reflection of a revolving door. when i’m feeling strong, when i’m feeling proud, i don’t see a grown-up seventeen year-old girl in the mirror, unsure how to compose her face, unsure of her place here. sometimes, like today, i catch my reflection and in it, i catch my strength and i catch my breath and think, i’m a woman.
or maybe it’s just the pearls and the lipstick.