In a bit of extension on yesterdays' post, today I have decided to write about my life long love-hate relationship with mirrors. In my family home growing up we had a fairly long hallway which happened to have a full length mirror at one end. When I began to cross dress at a very early age, I used to walk slowly up and down the hallway admiring myself in the mirror. I did it so much I an surprised I didn't wear a path in the carpet. Probably the only thing which saved me was not having all the time I wanted by myself to work on my feminine presentation. I cherished the all so brief periods of time I could actually be by myself. If the mirror could talk I could only imagine the stories it could tell.
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| Mirror Selfie from the Jessie Hart Collection |
As I progressed through life, the urge to have a friendly mirror grew with me. In fact when I was apartment shopping with my first wife, the location and access to a full length mirror was always a deciding factor. Even though I never said anything about it to my wife. The truth of the matter was I was addicted in a way to my beloved mirrors. One of the reasons was the mirror only told me exactly what I wanted to hear. None of it became evident to me until I began to seriously push open my gender closet door and see if I could exist as my feminine self in public. The more I tried to adjust my appearance, the more the mirror would tell me I was already doing a wonderful job. What I didn't understand was I did become fairly proficient in changing my male self to a feminine person but all of that wasn't nearly good enough. In order to survive in the world as a woman, many times I had to do better than just blend into the background. Plus a part of me was telling me loud and clear how much fun would it be anyhow to just blend in with a group of women increasingly falling away from the art of dressing up.
Finally, after my well documented failures as a novice transgender woman or cross dresser, I began to be successful in finding a sweet spot in my search for a dependable presentation. I discovered I could fall back to a fairly intense business woman look or on other occasions fall back into a much more casual jeans, boots and sweaters look. Normally, if I followed my developing feminine instincts and stayed within one of the two looks I mentioned, I found I could magically navigate society as a woman. Ironically at this point, mirrors would begin to help me. I found when I was out in public, the occasional glance in the mirror would calm my gender dysphoria and give me the courage to push forward into the brave new feminine world I was exploring.
It is important to note also, I had to learn the hard way to establish a truce with my mirrors. I came to the decision I didn't look as good as I thought I did. But on the other hand, I didn't look as bad as I thought either. At this point, all mirrors became a tool I could use to improve myself. In other words, my mirror became more of a reality check and my life really began to improve. Even though I still have the occasional morning battles with my mirror setting off my gender dysphoria, increasingly I am able to cope by thinking I am not as bad as I think. It's just the mirror playing it's tired mind games with me. No more love-hate relationship.
