My Personal Alice

Okay....so I was looking through my old portfolio trying to find inspiration for some new material I'm working on (edit: hope to be working on), and I came across this oddity. My senior year of high school I took an awesome creative writing class (props Mrs. Kaminsky) and forgot that I wrote this somewhat disturbing piece of literature. But hey, I guess this was my way of delving deeper into myself. I think this was my way of letting go of that childhood baggage and beginning anew. Reading back on this, I realize that this is no longer me--I no longer stare into a looking glass like one would stare into Wonderland. I'm definitely beyond this, and I'm glad.


          As my face peers into the looking glass my attention directs to the two large eye-lines peeking back. These are not the windows into my soul like the poets say, but instead they are indifferent (although not quite apathetic) and they raise questions in others as to whether or not I actually live in this accepted reality. They are wide and blank and blind but fairly comforting to me as I look into them. I see the shadow of twenty plus pounds recently shed from my skeleton, saggy and unused, cheeks hanging low like curtains.
          I do not see childhood in my face, although it is somewhat childlike; somehow the scar tissue in my brain has laid itself out like a map on my skin— opaque as to not let anyone in beneath its surface. The only remnant of my naivety is in my alien eyes, poking out behind the fragile surface and searching for a way to tear through reality; always wondering if what they see really exists or made up in some miraculous scheme.
        I dart away from the subject in the mirror—there is a reason artists avoid the self-portrait.
        My button nose, which caused me torment in my growing years, now sits pleasantly on my face. It nestles itself in between my cheeks for the long run, destined to bring me a lifetime youthfulness found in fantasy creatures.
        My other half (the half which resides in the looking glass) stares back unknowingly as its counterpart, the present resident of my mind, scrutinizes its every characteristic. Sometimes I wonder if the girl in the looking glass is who I am really meant to be, and I am here only as a pitiful shadow of its semblance. Am I the one masquerading behind the looking glass instead of she?
        I wish I could shake the looking glass, baring down on its form and begging it to tell me its secrets. I wish that the self looking back at me would drown itself in Alice’s Wonderland so I would no longer have to watch its foreign eyes dart about and point out not only my physical stress, but the mental madness which resides between the lines in my ever-changing figure.
        I walk away from the mirror, ready to delve into deeper pools of thought. My body is not meant to hang like a marionette being held by strings; it is a glove—a façade for my deeper soul and my concrete being. This mirror image is merely a glove for a more complex array of feelings. Simply the White Rabbit’s mitten.
       It’s odd peering back into that vacant eye-line. It screams and shakes the glass without lifting a finger; its face portrays more emotion than my quaking fists could ever muster. Why is so much time is spent mutilating and sculpting and prodding and poking this token of individuality? Does it really make a difference to the person staring back—or does it simply mock me in all my efforts to obtain perfection? Does it know that I have been trying to drown it in tears until it grows too big for the doorway out? Yes, certainly. I am eternally in the Wonderland of mirror-land, forever painting the roses of my lips red, forever peeling the skin from my face to find the person beneath. I believe that underneath my map of skin and lines and makeup I am nothing more than the reflection staring back. I am nothing but the Chesire cat, smiling sweetly from the looking glass below.