Mirror, Mirror on the wall…please don’t let me break a hip when I fall…

Sitting with the blinds open, finally accepting that winter is freaking here! Decided to sit down and let the shhhtuff in my head out since the writer’s strike has made new bad tv hard to find this morning.

Spent a few seconds too long in front of the mirror – a mistake I try very hard to avoid.

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I cannot recognize the person the memories tell me I should see, nor is it who the ego of my youth told me I would be.

Maybe that is true for everyone?

Maybe this is just what it is like to start losing yourself?

I don’t know, I never got a copy of the “who am I and how does this work” manual from the manufacturer; but for certain, some days a stranger is staring back from the mirror.

What I do know, what I can feel between the lines around my eyes and mouth, mingled in the gray/blonde/white/brown hair that is growing longer and reflects all of the years…

…is the cost of losing some genetic lottery that I never bought a ticket for, the scars on my body from removing and relacing defective parts; band aids at best…

…is every harsh word I ever released on the earth, a part of each person I physically or emotionally harmed (the pieces I broke in them), the lies I told, the things I stole; a secret or two that will exist until I draw my last breath…

…are remnants of smiles from the good I did, echoes of laughter with family and friends; the impression of hands held, shaken, waved or just touched for a fleeting second…

…are hints of youth that are hidden among the years of drug and alcohol abuse (self-inflicted wounds), not wearing sunscreen; in my eyes I still see the thirst for another day, a hunger for more life…

…I see everything that I was before I became the me staring back. It is all there.

Just not always sure how it happened…not always sure it is me.