I’ve always hates mirrors for a few reasons suddenly I seem to have more reasons to do so. The depth of my insecurities has developed quite a lot over the years. For some reason I’m not particularly sure that what I’m writing is going to make any sense, but we’ll see how that goes won’t we.
From the earlier part of my childhood, I have hated mirrors. I have always felt too ugly to see myself. I have come to understand that as much as psychology and science wants to portray the notion that a singular experience is always the underlying reason for a specific trauma and the reactions that stem from said traumatic event, that may be true in some cases but definitely that does not apply to a majority of the cases. Most traumatic responses are from a series of events, which may be similar or not. What I mean is that although one event can cause a long-lasting effect on a person, more cases than not is from a series of events rather than just one. I prefer the approach not to be so narrow minded to force all the problems developed in a person’s life be tied to just one singular event, rather all areas of the person’s life be explored because the effect that just one experience may be the root cause, several other events over the years would strengthen or weaken its effect.
That being said I’d further my analysis with my own experience. I do not promote self-diagnosis, so please if you feel or know something is wrong do visit a clinic or your personal doctor. I also cannot deny the obvious. In as much as the words ‘ugly’ was said to me it didn’t register till I looked in the mirror and started to see it for myself. I was a young child, so the concept of beauty wasn’t a factor that sunk in or mattered at that time. The concept of beauty went from being a rarely thought about thing to the perception of ugliness. Ironically, I wasn’t an ugly child and I knew it even then, but when the persons opinion that mattered most of you told you otherwise you’d begin to question your own knowledge especially in the absence of any other opinion. I started to see whatever ugliness I could find. For a child with an active imagination, it wasn’t hard to transform ‘nothing’ to ‘ugly’. If you asked me what exactly was the ugliness that I saw I can’t say what it was, mostly because my childhood is very very foggy. Anyways there is one thing I do remember I was told my smile was bad. It was bad because I smiled with my mouth closed, probably because I didn’t like the way my teeth looked because of the natural loss of teeth that happens to us all not because they were crocked or anything like that. I think the concept of being ugly was transferred to my smiling as I thought the less likely I was to be ugly required less smiling to protect myself from the ugliness. Then my protection was criticized, and I was forced to redirect my orientation elsewhere. I remember not liking my eyes either cause everyone said they were big and bulky; there wasn’t anything I could do about that though. So, my childhood insecurities made me hate the mirror and I avoided it expect I had to use it. Unfortunately, I still don’t like mirrors till this day, fortunately the reasons I hated them before is very different from why I don’t like them right now.
Contrary to what would have been evaluated as my reason for hating mirrors from the diagnostic sense of tracking on particular event of my childhood it would prove very wrong right now. I’m presently obsessed with the things I hated. My smile is addictive, and my eyes are purely sexual/sensual. Growing up I learnt those weren’t my problems, rather my strengths and I made them into weapons. Eventually puberty hit and I found more things to not like so my hate was moved from one part to another. Pimples and acne destroyed my once smooth and clear face so hence my mirror hatred continued.
I still very much always call myself ugly because of those things but I’m not blind to the fact that I am very attractive. Based on this insecurity I never liked my hair being out of my face. I prefer my hair covering my face at all times, so I did hairstyles that did exactly that. I still do it but now I’m old enough to wear make up whenever I want. Funny how I barely use make up when I don’t like my face. I think the admirers of my youth helped me rebuild my confidence about my looks before I came of the age to be a make up addict. I’ve come to accept my flawful skin as it is, and as everybody else has. Although others might see more than all the flaws that I see, I’m still well aware of everyone of my flaws. I may hate my face and the mirrors and cameras that make me see it, I know that I’m beautiful regardless, a beautiful ugly bitch but beautiful regardless.
I would like to encourage you to love yourself but I’m not going to be a hypocrite cause I don’t fully do either. But I will talk about all that another day.
Let me know what you think, any opinions or comments you may have as well as my latest daily segment (DeliciousWords) will be on Instagram: @beautifully_psychotic_ and Twitter: @BeautifullyPsyc. I look forward to interacting with you. Or if you just want to talk I’m here to listen.