Mirrors Mirrors Mirrors
She stood in a department store dressing room staring at her body reflected in the three surrounding full-length mirrors, then hung the three different sizes of blue jeans on separate hooks. Shopping for clothes, any clothes no longer excited her; shopping for clothes was an act of desperation, a need. Normally, whenever she saw a reflection of her entire body, she quickly looked away; but this time she couldn’t escape seeing what medical science now calls hormonal belly fat or visceral fat, including the surgical scars–the vertical ridge that extended downward from her navel left from the hysterectomy, the protruding pouch called an incision hernia, names that didn’t describe the emotional scars on her imaginary self-worth. She couldn’t escape seeing the mass of white hair that framed dull eyes buried in plump cheeks.
She thought, I’ll start with trying on the larger size blue jean. Although it fit comfortably around the waist, it sagged horribly over the hips and buttocks. The mirrors reflected smiles, slightly raised brows, and a sassy-like twinkle in her eyes, as she mused, there’s still hope for me. She easily stepped out of the blue jean, put it back on the hanger, and reached for the next pair, the next smaller size. It fitted nicely around the hip and its straight-leg style definitely gave her a more uniform slender shape; but she couldn’t fasten it without painfully holding in her stomach muscles. The smiles in the mirrors faded. Don’t bother with trying on that last pair, the smallest size, she whispered to the images.
“Are you doing okay?” asked the sales associate through the dressing room curtain.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she replied. (But the word not quietly surfaced in her mind.) She thought, perhaps she should try a stretch style blue jean where the legs fit tight then expand to fit the middle section of the body. She felt the gush of a resounding NO, it’s a trap, it’s not me, and I’m not fine, she repeated in her mind. She sat down hard on the little stool in the dressing room, again, finding herself staring in the mirrors at her body through watery eyes, wanting so much to see a slender woman, her younger woman. Each mirror held the image of her from different angles, each seemed to come alive with advice on how to escape the dressing room with her soul intact: the image in the middle said, give it up, go with the flow, buy stretch blue jeans; the image on the right said, sarcastically, it takes work to have a “perfect” body, and long ago you stopped putting in the work, what’d you expect? Then the image on the left simply sympathetically said, paint your new body with the color of a new heart.