It’s such a simple question with such a complicated set of answers.
“Look in the mirror. Look yourself in the eyes. Tell me what you see. The only rule is you cannot say any negatives”.
My eyes are my favorite thing physically about myself next to my voice. Looking up at myself is easy. I didn’t understand the ask, though, and so I started describing my physical features…eyes are bright blue, hair is a duller version of the dark brown I’m accustomed to but has bright streaks of white in it all over now…skin is more dull but still youthfullish…
and she stops me.
“No. Look yourself in the eyes and tell me what you see. What do you see when you see yourself?”
I stumbled for an answer for what felt like an eternity, desperately glancing back up at myself and then back down at the floor, waving my hands to show frustration and sighing with exasperation before looking back up and with a slight shake of my head saying “Nothing. I don’t see anything”.
The social worker in me caught it before my brain could stop me. “NO NO NO NO, Sara, shut up, shut up right now!” I could hear myself screaming in my head, could almost see the other side of me yelling back at me from inside the mirror.
She nodded slowly, looking me in the eyes as I stood there with tears streaming down my cheeks with the realization of what she’d just done to me.
“Try again. Tell me three things you see. Just three little things.”
I could almost feel myself scratching at the walls around me, trying desperately to keep them up as they crumbled around me like so much rubble. Why am I so easy to disassemble?
I stood there for several minutes staring at myself, trying to calm my breathing and trying to find an answer.
“Windows”..I whispered “I see my soul shining at me a bit at a time”.
“What else?”
I thought this meant that I’d gotten the answer wrong. I worry about that a lot..saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, pushing people away without meaning to.
“I don’t…”
“Don’t think so hard. Just look and feel. What do you see?”
I stammered again, mouth slightly open as I bit my lip, trying to calm my mind and just go with it. Finally, after an agonizing minute or two, I came up with something..
“I see an imperfect body that still managed to create and hold life”.
“What else? One more.”
It took me another minute but I had finally grasped the whole “let go and stop overthinking it” thing long enough to come up with my final response.
“I see hands that have clawed out of fire, given pleasure, and held on for dear life”.
“There you go. Start there. Your task over the next few weeks is go look yourself over head to toe..find the positives in every inch..and then go inside your mind and find the positives there too”.
I left the office feeling vulnerable, naked, and wounded probably more than I have let myself feel in a very long time.
But I did see that spark of my soul in there. And that means I have work to do.
