The Round Mirror
The round mirror in my dressing approves. I smile. I am looking good.
And somewhere between the mirror and the door, I wonder when exactly I started needing that. Not the lipstick, not the kajal, not the particular way the light falls at this hour.
The approval.
We all have a round mirror. Not always the one on the dressing table. Sometimes it is the likes counter we check before the coffee is made. Sometimes it is the message we are waiting for that hasn't come. Sometimes it is the room we walk into, reading faces — Am I welcome here?
Validation is not vanity.
I used to pride myself on not needing it, which of course meant I needed it enormously and had simply learned to hide the checking.
We are wired, from the very beginning, to need a witness. That the things we feel and make and carry — land somewhere, in someone.
But - not all watching is seeing.
I felt it today. Three questions, asked without agenda, that I hadn't thought to ask myself.
They took me from telling to living.
And underneath it, I was there.
Seen.
Everything else is just the mirror talking.
And the mirror, for all its confidence, only sees the surface.
It has never once seen you.