Reflecting (Literally)

The first time I did shrooms, my friend gave me the full rundown: don't worry about how you're feeling, don't stress about what it's going to be like, just forget you even took anything and allow your body to enjoy the evening set up for you. And as helpful as that advice was, to just "let it be", the thing that stuck with me the most was actually from a podcast I had heard a few years prior. They were telling stories of their experiences on hallucinogens, especially the bad ones, and one man chimed in to share a particularly bad trip he had had in college involving a mirror. He talked about how he had taken acid for the first time, and gotten stuck staring at his reflection, spiraling about why he looked like a completely different person. And though try as I could to take my friend's advice to heart and assure myself the best trip possible, I couldn't fend off my curiosity. I went downstairs to use the bathroom, locking the door to ensure the most privacy in the worst-case scenario. But as I washed my hands, at first gazing at the enlargement of my pupils, I began to recognize my father's shade of green circling them. I saw the freckles on my cheeks that my mom used to count in the Summertime, and when I smiled, I could see my sister's teeth. It was as if I were seeing myself for the first time - it was as if I was seeing myself - through the smile lines, the double-lined lips, through the size of my nose and veins in my forehead. I looked in the mirror for what felt like hours, and contrary to my warnings, I didn't spiral; in fact, I was stuck on admiration.

To say I've struggled with my reflection is an understatement. In fact, I can't really name a time that I was entirely secure in my appearance - not to imply I've never been confident, but rather that, no matter how confident, I will always have days in which I wake up with a "bad face day" as I have come to coin it. As the digits in my age increased, so did my insecurities. It was my stomach, then my arms, chest, neck, nose, and eyes, shortly followed by my knees, calves, hands and feet, chin, teeth, and lips. For as long as I can remember, my mirror and I would spend hours together, as it pointed out each individual flaw I could ever imagine having. My skin was too textured, the transition from calf-to-ankle was too narrow, my jaw was too rounded, and my nostrils were too flared. But more distinctly than the insecurities themselves were the comments I would back them up with. I'd wonder how long I'd looked that way without realizing, and how long it would take for others to notice the same shortcomings; and sure enough, they almost always did. "Why can I see so far up your nose?" one friend asked as I tilted my head back in a laugh; "You'd be so much more attractive if you had a better jawline" another said years later; "Oh I'll have to order a bigger chin rest" my violin tutor told me as she noted the distance between the rest and where it should've lied had my neck been a few inches shorter. These little intricacies plagued me, but in a somewhat more complex way than just the average way a kid my age may tend to pick at themselves. 

I was a fairly confident kid. I knew I wasn't necessarily "ugly", I knew that my physical appearance garnered even a slight amount of interest on some occasions, and most importantly, I knew that I was "a handsome young man", or so my grandmothers friends would always point out at church. But the thing I always struggled with was deciding what these two very distinct emotions meant when combined. How can I be so flawed, so imperfect, so inevitably odd-looking, yet still be deemed as, at the minimum, "okay" looking?

It took me many years of attempting to answer this question before I found some semblance of a resolution - it all boils down to what we're accustomed to. One of the cool things about social media is that it allows unheard conversations to reach a very broad audience. The conversations that it feels nobody is willing to have; those weird, niche topics you think are completely exclusive to you and your innermost dialogue, only to realize that you are not only not alone, but are a part of thousands of others with the exact same thought. One such conversation was one of our reflections, and more specifically, how unreliable they can be. We grow accustomed to seeing a specific version of ourselves, one usually composed in flattering lighting, seen head-on, and, whether intentionally or not, posed in an attractive way. We familiarize ourselves with a specific version of us, and, even if we do spend time picking what we see apart as many of us so frequently do, that becomes our reality; that becomes the face we expect to see in the mirror. On the contrary, the bad part of social media is the side of it that invites reconsideration of that fact. Pictures have become a language in their own right. They tell stories and depict truths otherwise hard to describe, and worst of all, they are capable of displaying hard evidence and harsh truths about a reality we have come to accept as the one and only - our appearance being one of the most tangible. 

One of the biggest and hardest hurdles in trying to maintain some level of confidence has been this rough aspect of life, constantly urging the question, "Is that really what I look like?" It's as if no matter how much work I put into respecting myself, and understanding that nobody needs to look perfect, there will always be a birthday post on my Mom's Facebook, or a candid photo hidden within a friends monthly photo dump that brings me back to square one. I can handle some skin texture, a line between my relentlessly baby-fatted cheeks and a nose passed down from Poland, I can even handle the fact that if I look hard enough, one of my eyes is slightly lower than the other - what I cannot handle, is accepting all of those things, and then seeing an image taken (without my knowledge) that displays an angle of my face that highlights every single flaw simultaneously, plus a few extra I had yet to acknowledge. And it begs yet another question, one most commonly asked after picking a piece of spinach from my two front teeth after a brunch date with my family: "How long has that been there? Why did nobody tell me?" Why is it that everyone was more than willing to humble me on the things I was not only well aware of, but already gut-wrenchingly insecure about, yet now it seems I am left to my own devices to uncover the fact that I may be just a little bit ugly?

My general consensus is that age is probably one of the most contributing factors, though at two very different stages of one's life. Puberty is a time in which it feels like everything is changing, both mentally and physically, making the recognition of one's "self" feel significantly more challenging, and essentially impossible. Your emotions are elevated, and it feels as though the second your pre-pubescent brain can get a handle on who you are and what you look like, your entire being metamorphoses into something unrecognizable. Based on that assumption, I remember the first time I felt truly free of the seemingly life-long battle to not only feel confident, but gain the ability to see the same face in the mirror two days in a row - to recognize myself. Around the Summer of 2022, I became stagnant. Maybe it was the ending days of puberty, maybe it was the consistent routine I had finally managed to nail down, or maybe it was just the heightened energy of completing my first full year away from home. Regardless of the root cause, it felt as though I could finally exhale in a way I had never been able to before. I felt good - not perfect, not even entirely confident, but for the first time, it felt like all the years of physical inquisition, and all the yet-to-be-answered questions had finally found some form of resolution - I felt like I had finally become myself. I stayed there for a while. For almost an entire year, I didn't spiral about how I looked. I didn't feel the need to dye my hair bi-weekly, or cut it short the second it didn't lay right - I didn't spend hours in the morning desperately clawing at my face, trying to contort it to look the way it did the night before. Every picture of me was me, every outfit I wore was the best I had ever put on. It was a year of uninterrupted contentment. 

I don't know when it stopped. I can't say if it was just the next step in my aging process, or if it was all just a specific mindset I stumbled into, but I have been desperately grasping at finding that feeling once again. For the last year, it has felt as though I have left some version of myself behind, finding myself stuck between trying to bring him back, and all the while (not so) patiently waiting for the next evolution to come to fruition. That was, until about a week ago. Amidst an end-of-day breakdown, the kind that leaves you mute and unceasingly introspective, I caught a glimpse of someone I thought was long gone. To summarize, as well as save the story for another day, I had experienced a mentally challenging family dinner, one that flash-banged me back into the memories of what it had been like to grow up where I now found myself returned to. And as I brushed my teeth and washed the evening off my face, I looked in the mirror and saw 18-year-old me staring back, a young, naive, and objectively hurting young man, still taking his first steps in becoming a person capable of being on his own. 

In that moment, I didn't see the bags under my eyes or the wrinkles forming from decades of bending over in laughter. I saw myself. I saw that night in Flagstaff, with pupils the size of my iris, where, for a few moments, I could see through the lifetime of pent-up insecurities. I saw my parents' child, my roommate's roommate, my sister's brother, my friend's friend. And for a few minutes, I watched that reflection as I made faces at it, smiling, grimacing, squinting, scowling, seeing the contour lines fold and build the face I've had for 23 years. And then it went away, bleeding back into the now - into my self. 

I don't know what makes a person confident. I don't know what it takes to get there. What I do know is everything I have been told - "I wish you could see what I see," my mother tells me as I wipe a tear from my eye, "We are our own harshest critics," I hear time and time again. And as easy as it may seem to fixate on all the things about yourself that you wish to fix, sometimes seeing yourself as the friend, sibling, child, coworker, roommate, peer, or person that you are can be even easier.