Becoming friends with stranger in looking glass

Relationships and associations are in a state of constant flux. Intense or casual, new or old, happy ones or those causing grief, all have one thing in common. They change, weather or adapt to the constant motions in the seasons of our lives.

These days my mind keeps going back, time and again, with regret, bewilderment and an odd sense of appropriation to a beautiful friendship I had invested my heart and soul in, as a teenager. It was great while it lasted and I am at a loss to understand why it has now soured. The situation is obviously irretrievable but I still feel completely let down.

Of course, the cracks appeared in a slow and insidious manner. These awful break-ups tend to linger and inflict more sorrow. I did have many moments of self-doubt and unclarity but before I knew it, my long-term friend had, suddenly and irrevocably turned away from me. What was I to do?

Our relationship had been a mutual one or so I innocently thought. I had grown so fascinated with it that my mother noticed and was a little dismayed and worried. I suppose she put it down to a teenage obsession initially then and ignored it for a while but would, as time passed, throw oblique hints and give veiled advice as to how my friend was fickle, merely a flatterer, and this relationship bore no good for the future. In fact, she went so far as to say that I would become vain and narcissistic if I continued spending so much time with this capricious and inconsistent friend because she too had fallen prey to a similar situation in her growing up years.

If you haven’t already guessed this evil presence in my life let me introduce you to the looking glass!

It is dreadful when the mirror is no longer a woman’s best friend. For quite some time, I had a mind to label it a little liar, whimsical and flighty. But now, prudently, I avoid eye contact with it, especially in broad daylight. Where I would smilingly greet it, numerous times in a day for reassurances, I now dodge and duck in its presence. In fact, in a petty flash of temper I even contemplated removing a few from their vantage points on the house walls and considered replacing them with pretty paintings of landscapes instead.

It’s not easy to accept the fact that now while travelling, my make-up kit takes up more space than all the clothes and shoes put together. The brushes, paint pots, concealers, tints and powders promise respite from reality and the lies I am convinced the mirror is telling me, but, alas, do not deliver. In retrospect, I can now admit that I have no one other than myself to blame for this betrayal. The need was mine; the dependence was mine, the mirror, laughing up its sleeve, maybe would have liked to warn me.

Lately though, I am trying once again to become friends with the stranger I see because she is forgiving, accepting and, happily, beginning to grow on me.

OUR RELATIONSHIP HAD BEEN A MUTUAL ONE OR SO I INNOCENTLY THOUGHT. I HAD GROWN SO FASCINATED WITH IT THAT MY MOTHER NOTICED AND WAS A LITTLE DISMAYED AND WORRIED