Living without a Mirror for One Year

I couldn’t imagine living without a mirror before. It’s not that I had some elaborate morning routine or sat vainly staring at myself for hours a day. My hair is short and I only wear lipstick. But the mirror was what I used to gauge my readiness before heading out into the world.

Was I:

Looking well-rested?

Having a good hair day?

Showing my age?

Whatever result I saw in the mirror I reflected back to the world throughout the day. That morning image impacted my work, my self-esteem, and my relationship.

But now, after fourteen months without a bathroom mirror, I’ve learned just how misleading a mirror’s reflection can be.

How I Lost My Mirror

In January 2014, we bought a house in Spain. The house sat vacant for five years, a victim of Spain’s recession. When we bought it, there was some work and a lot of cleaning to be done. We were lucky that the bathroom was already updated by the previous owners, containing a shower and even a heated towel rack. With a good scrub and some new towels, all we really needed was a mirror.

After selling our house and all our belongings in 2010 to travel the world, we didn’t have so much as a dish towel or a pillowcase to our names. We certainly didn’t have a bathroom mirror. So we began scouring the second-hand shops and auctions in our area looking for the essentials, including the bathroom mirror.

As the house became a cozy home, first with a couch, then with a bed, rugs, a reading chair, and more, we still couldn’t find a bathroom mirror we liked. So we just never got one, not until this week.

And you know what? We didn’t miss it.

A Better Measuring Stick

Without a mirror, I learned to evaluate myself accurately. When I stopped starting the day with a visual inventory, an accounting of all the ways my body was betraying me, I was surprisingly free to go about enjoying my life, satisfied with the face that laughed through wrinkles, the stocky legs that walked me over mountains, and the hair that started changing color on it’s own when I finally stopped dyeing it.

How do I feel? This question replaced my daily mirror routine. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me if I was tired, gaining weight, or feeling a little out of sorts. I could feel it. By using a mirror for so long, I’d gotten out of touch with myself.

Over the months without the mirror, I tuned into my body. I adjusted my diet, activity and rest levels daily to stay at what I considered optimum levels of happiness and productivity.

Getting ready for the day was faster when I stopped counting wrinkles, and pictures taken during this time do not show me looking any different than when we had a mirror.

Warren and I began looking out for each other, taking account of each other’s appearance in ways that we’d gradually stopped doing over the years. We’d do a quick spin after getting dressed for the day. Is this alright? Anything out of place? Rather than the mirror pointing out the flaws, we simply helped each other groom a bit more.

Compliments flowed. We noticed more details about each other.

But the biggest transformation was in my feeling of readiness to face the world. Without a mirror, I simply got dressed and started living.

No more letting this thing on the wall determine my mood, readiness, or energy level.”

Bringing the Mirror Back

When we finally bought the mirror last week, my first thought was that it would be easier to put on my contacts and floss my teeth.

And now that it is hanging in my bathroom, I am delighted to discover the lessons of the past year have paid off. I still start the day listening to my body rather than the image staring back at me. I haven’t joined the anti-aging brigade now that I can see more of the gray in my hair or the wrinkles around my eyes.

My body feels good. My heart feels strong. My mind is more creative than it has ever been.

When I stare into the mirror now, I can confidently tell it what to reflect back to me.

You know what else I like to see? Heroines of books who look, act, and talk like me and my friends.

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