Mirrors (part2)

As a child I used to stare in the mirror for hours. Another one of my time fillers games. During those long after school hours, feeling alone in the house. Father always slept in the afternoon due to his night job, brother was somewhere else, out, playing with some of his older friends, and mother at work. In those days I could feel already the weight of it all, not knowing what do. Because father was next door, noise was not permitted, games were limited. At times I simply watched tv, at others I read, but I did not do much more than that. At times I did go downstairs in the cellar and many times I simply get lost watching my reflection in one of the many mirrors in the house. My preferred one mirror was the one in the bathroom. I could stay hours in there, without making a sound. The border of the bath tub was at the right height for me to seat there and see the top of the reflection of my head, looking into my eyes. I remember the distinct feeling of losing myself into my eyes, almost hypnotized by my own soul. This sense of not being, physically there but not really there. I felt my mind travelling throw my soul, looking for what I did not know , feeling the depth of this wonderful place. I was in complete awe of it. I felt comfortable and troubles free. Hour after hour. Usually I came back OK, but I have the gut feeling that at times I did hide in there. At times I think I came back physically but at a different level of my perceived reality. I came back in a different state of mind, not necessarily a good one. I think I learned how to lie to myself in front of that mirror. I lied to me, right there, in front of my own eyes. I discovered a short cut. If I did not come back completely from those trips, I would not feel my pain. the pain ceased to hurt. The pain did not matter any more. I discovered how not to feel the hurt of reality, I had simply to come back at a different level of reality, a different state of mind from that wonderful place that was my inner soul. I realise now that eventually I mastered the great skill of lying to myself. I created the perfect hiding place. It is amazing that I can now clearly understand the trip that ultimately took me to visit the scariest and deepest place in the universe, that same awe inspiring soul of mine. The state of mind that I entered in those trips, the lie that I eventually started to believe did not disappeared until very very recently. For a very long time I convinced myself that all my pain and fears were not important, I had learned where to hide in the very moment I did start to feel any kind of hurt. My lies got me throw for most of my life, as a child and later as an adult, Different guises for the same lie. The reality was that to survive I had to lie to myself. I did lost contact with my soul. Throughout my life I can remember the uneasiness of catching my reflection in any mirror, a feeling that later I associated with shame and a new kind of guilt. I learned to hate myself when I spotted me staring back.