Circa March, 2020
I’m looking in the mirror and who I’m seeing isn’t me. I don’t know how to explain this, other than to say, I mean it literally. I’m staring at my own reflection, and the person I see is my brother. Or my mother. Sometimes I see my grandmother. Often it’s my father. On a good day, I see my aunt.
For several years, I‘ve noticed this phenomenon. Today, it occurs to me to wonder, when was the last time I saw me?
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Current Day
The passage above is what I believe to be the start of my next book. It took many years for me to disappear. Make no mistake, I did this intentionally. I gave up on my health and appearance until I no longer recognized myself. I stopped using my voice, until I had all but lost the physical capacity to do so. I sent my true self into hiding, fully convinced she was not wanted. I did not allow myself to be seen or heard, all the while still going through the motions of a life.
What kind of a person does this, and why?
The construction of this book is an exploration into that question. How I see it now is a jumbled up mess. A mishmash of flashes in whatever form they need to take. The kinds of flashes that make a person who they are—the joyful, the fearful, the unspeakable moments—all in reflection of the beauty and wreckage of what it is to be human.
This, of course, is a love story.
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On December 23, 2022, that mirror I’d been gazing into for twenty years, the one that spanned the wall above my bathroom sink, dislodged itself and shattered in shards out onto the floor.