In August 2017, I found myself living back at my mum’s house, a 5 minute drive from the house I grew up in. It was a different house but it was still the same bed that I had when I was growing up. There was something about the familiarity that was both comforting and gut wrenching at the same time. Although I felt I had taken a massive step, I woke up feeling like it was a giant step backwards.
This one particular morning, I hadn’t closed the curtains properly the night before, so the sun light woke me up. I wasn’t sleeping particularly well anyway, so even the night owl in me was getting tired. Although I was awake, I just kept my eyes closed as silent tears were just pouring onto my pillow, that even my scrunched eyes couldn’t contain. It got to around 8am in the morning and my mum brought me a coffee up, (which she always did bless her) and I was able to disguise my teary red eyes with an excessive rub and a forced yawn. You see, as much as my mum would always comfort me, crying had always been my last resort. If you ever saw me cry it was because I had zero control over keeping it in. I had always been the type of person who would use the excuse of needing the bathroom, so I could quickly gather myself, clear the lump in my throat and suppress my emotions until I was on my own to deal with them.
The interesting thing about the timing of moving back to my mum’s, was that she had just recently got a lodger. Not just any lodger though, it was a good friend of mine called Ryan. He is such a laid back Larry, and has always been the type of person to just shrug his shoulders and get on with things. I always kind of admired the laugh he would do when discussing his tribulations. He wasn’t where he thought he would be in life either, but his answer was always, ‘ah well, fuck it, what can you do?’, typically just before he was about to spark up his roll up.
This one particular morning though, my mum had left the bedroom door open after she had kindly delivered me my morning coffee, and shortly afterwards Ryan walked past my bedroom door. He popped his head around and asked if I fancied a brew. It was as though a millisecond after he offered that he saw I was already drinking one, and then momentarily after that he noticed I was crying. I was so engrossed in my sadness and trying to hide it from my mum, that I was completely unaware that she had left the door open. So when Ryan offered me the drink, and I naturally turned to look at him, I didn’t have the time to try and disguise it. Before I could even attempt another drawn out yawn, he looked startled and said ‘oh shit mate, what’s wrong, are you ok?’. He had caught me in one of those zero control moments, where I had nowhere to escape to compose myself. I could feel my eyes filling up again; so I just brought my hands up to cover my face, put my head down and just simply wept and said; ‘no’.
‘Erm, do you want to talk about it?’ Ryan said awkwardly, with his head still floating at my door. I lifted my head up, wiped my eyes and took a very deep breath. He pulled that side smile, you know the one Popeye does with his pipe hanging out of his mouth; and said ‘I’ll go make that brew shall I, I think you’ll need another one’. It was rather sweet how he knew that I just needed a moment to compose myself. I just smiled and gave him a nod.
When he came back up with my brew in his hand, it was just enough time for me to put on my dressing gown, open the curtains, make the bed and then sit on it again. My mum had always instilled it into us as kids that this was how you started your day; so I did it out of habit, not that I was actually going to leave my room that day.
Perched on the end of my bed, resting his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, Ryan looked at me and kind of nodded his head as if to say, go on then, tell me what’s up. My eyes started to well up again, I literally could not control it. It was like the second I thought about what was happening, my emotions would go into overdrive. I’d left my partner of 7 years, my entire life belongings were piled up in bin bags around me, and I had received a text from him that morning which said I needed to take a long hard look at myself. I read the text out to Ryan, barely being able to see my screen through my tears. Ryan did a sigh, looked around my room and said ‘well look on the bright side mate; you haven’t really got much choice have you? There’s a fucking mirror everywhere you look in this house!’.
The sudden burst of laughter forced the last remaining tears from my eyes. I love how he would throw a casual ‘fucking’ into his sentences. It reminded me of my grandma. She always used to say ‘fecking’ and it made me smile every time. It felt really nice to actually be laughing though. I felt I hadn’t done that for a while. He said ‘no really, I’m not joking, they’re fucking everywhere! Count them, I bet there’s 15 of them easy’. I looked around and saw four in my room alone. This tickled me so much, because to me that was normal. My mum, ‘Kee’ as we like to call her, was obsessed with mirrors. In fact, she was obsessed with anything to do with her house. She had about a hundred lamps as well. Walking into her house was like walking into an antique shop. But she loved it and we loved her for it. Apart from the one that looks like dying plants in your living room Kee; that ones got to go.
So anyway, taking on Ryan’s advice; that’s exactly what I did. I counted the mirrors. There were 18 upstairs alone and a further 9 downstairs. 27 mirrors. 27 damn mirrors. But I guess he was right, I didn’t really have much choice did I? So that’s what I did. I took a long hard look at myself.
