Heyyyy April! I can’t believe how fast we’ve been moving through this month. April is also a month that feels like “almost”. We’re almost at the end of the semester and almost at the beginning of Summer. The word almost also reminds me of the color purple. (Comment if you think otherwise)

For this month’s blog, I wanted to give you something a little different. This little piece was an idea I expanded on from a sentence I kept remembering from something I didn’t remember…

“I look in the mirror, I make weird faces.”

I don’t know where it came from, and the repetition of the sentence in my head did not make me feel any more relaxed. But I wrote it down in my journal in hopes of feeling a sense of release since at this point it was bugging me. This one is silly, but I am here for the silliness so why not put it on the blog?

With my hands in fists and bunched up in my hair, I try remembering the last time it was brushed. Then I hear my watch’s disturbing tick as I feel my frustration rising- begging for a sign. I look in the mirror. I see something else. I take a deep breath and stare back at myself in disgust as I pick up my comb and restart my bun for the third time.

I’m dancing again. There is nothing else. 

I glance at myself only for a moment because I’m standing in the weird mirror. It’s all distorted and I feel myself starting to pull away from reality but I still manage to keep a smile on my face. I bet the mirror knows I’m hiding. I bet the mirror knows that there is a weird face underneath this composed one. I bet no one knows.

After a long cry, I look at my reflection in my vanity mirror across my bed and stick my tongue out. Not in the way I would stick my tongue out for a drop of rain to fall on it, but in the way I would do a quirky pose for a picture- a group selfie perhaps. Imagining the juxtaposition of swollen eyes and a red nose combined with a tongue out and a peace sign is beautiful and has me floored. I’ll do this almost every time I cry. Like my recurrent dream of falling that comes back on the most random nights, the face comes back in the same way. I look in the mirror, I make weird faces, and I come back again.

I’m walking down the street with one ear listening to a song, and the other listening to someone else’s conversation. I don’t realize I’m smiling until I recognize myself in the reflective glass of a restaurant. 

That moment reminded me of all the times I would look in the mirror and make weird faces. This time I don’t make a face. I don’t often recognize myself, especially the times I’m making weird faces in the mirror, but this time I did. I saw someone who is smiling for no reason.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since.