Funhouse Mirror of Your Fears

During Christmas break of my freshman year of college, 10 of us from SU drove 28 hours to Florida to canoe close to 90 miles of the Everglades. It was a trip of a lifetime (and with gas being only 99 cents a gallon, it was a cheap trip too), an adventure I still learn things from almost ten years later.
We were out on the water for 12 days total and during that time we didn't have a mirror, didn't get to shower, didn't even step onto land (we stayed on platforms).
It was so freeing. Not being able to stare at my image was freeing. I stopped caring. I got ok with not worrying how I looked on the outside but how I looked on the inside and I could be honest.
It's like if you stare at yourself too long in a mirror you don't become more beautiful, your blemishes become bigger. It becomes a funhouse mirror of sorts. You spend too much time looking at yourself you are bound to hate what you see.
Me spending too much time looking at me does no good. That is where I need a witness; need someone who helps see the truth and see the lies; who loves me well enough to call out the blemishes,the bullshit and the beauty. Reminds me to stop looking so long at myself that I forget the world around me and those I love.
I had a long conversation with someone today about shame and I'm realizing more and more that the death of shame is honesty and voluntary exposure...bringing it to light to those who are your accountability, your witness, who love enough to not let you live in it. Shame is mold that grows in dark places. It forces secrets, lies, corners, covers, darkness, deceit more than anything else I personally struggle with. Not to say you shouldn't get yourself out of your own damn mess, but support is vital.
This is sorta jumpy, sorry. It's still stewing.

Myopia

I got glasses when I was in second grade. I was very farsighted, which is apparently rare in young children and I got these plastic glasses that were pink on the top and faded to blue on the bottom. I loved them. In third grade I went back for my yearly checkup only to discover that now my left eye had become nearsighted as my right had stayed farsighted. They gave me plastic glasses that were blue on the top and faded to pink on the bottom...except they had bifocal lenses in them. An 8-year-old wearing bifocals. Awesome. I was self-conscious about the line running across my lenses, feeling my oddity like itchy wool. I only had bifocals for a year. My right eye eventually got with the program and became nearsighted and I've been in glasses or contacts ever since. Now my left eye is so nearsighted I have trouble distinguishing not only form and distance but also color—things blur together without lenses to pull it all into focus, to show me what is the what. Without lenses I have problems seeing my own hand in front of my face.

This is the effect of the literal lenses through which life is viewed; how much more important are the figurative ones. The ones that can see the whole mess and yet focus upon the beauty within it, the moments where life is sustained, love is actioned, hope a bulwark against all evidence to the contrary. I don't know what it all means, but those are the lenses that matter more and more as the intricacies of each day, each situation become overwhelmingly distinct. I need to see those edges.