In the memory care community where my mom lives, there are no mirrors. Part of this is for safety—glass can be dangerous—but there's another reason, one that feels much heavier:
Mirrors can startle, even frighten, people who have dementia.
Seeing a person they don’t recognize can bring on confusion and anxiety. It's unsettling to look into a mirror and not know who's staring back at you.
I've been thinking about this CONSTANTLY since yesterday—not recognizing who you see in the mirror.
And I've realized that it doesn't just happen to those with dementia. It happens to all of us.
I stand in front of the mirror, adjusting my hair, fixing my clothes, making sure everything looks right. I'm trying to perfect what I see. But do I ever walk away feeling complete? Feeling beautiful? Or do I always end up noticing my flaws—the parts of myself that have never seemed to fit, no matter how much I try to make them better?
It's human nature to focus on imperfections. I've stared at my reflection more times than I can count, wondering what I need to change to feel whole, to not feel utterly broken all the time.
But yesterday, I realized it's not just my own reflection I've been trying to fix. I've been doing this to the people I love, too.
There's someone from my past who I spent 20 years trying to reshape—piece by piece—into someone who wouldn't hurt me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was taking away parts of who they were, replacing them with what I thought they should be to make me feel safe. I tried to make them a mirror of what I wanted, without seeing how much of themselves I was erasing in the process.
There's another in my life who I spent 17 years trying to mold into someone who wouldn't reflect back the parts of myself I've been afraid of—the impulsive, reckless, angry parts I've fought so hard to leave behind. I thought I was protecting them, shielding them from becoming a version of me. But in trying to make them be someone safer, someone better, I took away pieces of who they really were. I was so focused on making them into someone who wouldn’t be hurt by the world or themselves that I didn't see the harm I was causing in the process.
Now, I see that I’ve been doing the same thing to the one I hold the closest. Out of fear of being hurt again, I’ve tried to shape our relationship into something that feels safer for me. It's because I've been so afraid of what might happen if I let go of control. In trying to protect myself from more pain, I risked taking away pieces of what makes our relationship the best and most fulfilling thing we've ever experienced, and that's not what I want for us.
But now I see why I did it.
My trauma taught me to expect betrayal, to be on guard for the next wound. It taught me that the world and the people in it will hurt me, unless I do something to stop it first.
So, I chipped away at those closest to me—even those who are a literal physical part of my being—a little at a time, thinking if I could fix their reflection, I could keep myself from being broken even more.
It wasn't about control; it was about survival. It was about trying to create safety in a world that hasn't felt safe to me since I was six years old.
But instead of feeling secure, I ended up carving out pieces of the people I loved, until they no longer recognized themselves—or me.
At least not the real me.
The real me is compassionate and devoted. I love fiercely and have tried to build a life of passion, adventure, and authentic connections, for myself and my "tribe." I’m deeply intuitive, and I’ve always been an advocate for the people I love, wanting them to feel seen, valued, and whole. I believe in standing with others through life's most painful times and offering care and empathy. That’s who I am, in my core—and it's the person I'm always trying to be.
And knowing the damage I did to the people I love left them struggling with their own sense of identity, carrying emotional scars into their future relationships and seeking therapy to make sense of the pieces I took away, makes the "real me" hurt even more.
I thought I was keeping them safe, but instead, I left them with wounds they've had to heal from on their own.
The truth is, the mirror doesn't reflect the pain, the fear, or the history that shapes who we are. And it certainly doesn't show us what's happening inside. We can only see the parts people show us—the parts we allow ourselves to see—and we project our own fears and insecurities onto that reflection.
I've been doing this for a long time, with people I love, and I didn't realize it until just now.
I've been trying to take out the parts of them that scare me and replace them with something safer:
Actions that I can control
Behaviors that model my values
Choices that I can steer in a safe direction
Thoughts that help me feel protected, not challenged
Something that won't hurt me. I've told myself it's for their own good—that I'm helping them become better versions of themselves.
But if I'm honest, it's been all about protecting myself. For 34 years of my life.
I see it clearly now. I've been holding up a mirror to the people in my life and saying:
"I don't like that part of you. Let me fix it."
But what I've really been saying is:
"I'm scared. Please don't hurt me."
The breakthrough I've had over the past few days is this: I can't keep doing that.
I can't keep trying to change people out of my fear of being hurt.
It's not fair to them, and it's not fair to me. If I keep taking pieces of people away, trying to reshape them, they'll look in their own mirrors one day and not recognize who they are. And that's not love. That's fear masquerading as love.
In the memory care center, they remove mirrors because they don't want residents to feel scared or anxious by seeing a face they don't recognize.
But I need to remove some of the mirrors I've been holding up to the people I love.
When you've been hurt—especially by adults you trusted as a child—it's easy to try and reshape the people around you to feel safer.
I've done that. I've used the people I love as mirrors, hoping they'd reflect back a version of life where I wouldn't be hurt again. I've tried to take away anything that felt like a risk—anything that reminded me of the ways I was betrayed before—and convinced myself I was just protecting us both.
But I see now that real healing doesn't come from reshaping someone else. It doesn't come from controlling their reflection so I feel less afraid of what might happen.
It comes from standing in front of my own reflection and accepting what I see—knowing that I don't need someone else to make me feel safe.
I have to find that sense of safety within myself.
I'm working on that now. I'm researching ways, therapies, healing opportunities that will help me learn to let people be who they are, without trying to change them into a version that makes me feel safe.
It's hard. Excuse me for a moment, but it's f*cking hard.
It means facing my own fears head-on, without using someone else as a shield. But it also means building relationships that are real—relationships where both people can look in the mirror and say, "This is me. And I'm enough."
I may think that the mirror may be man's worst invention, but maybe it's also the most honest one we've got. It shows us who we are—flaws and all—and asks us to accept what we see.
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