the bevolution

While looking in the mirror just now, tying my very thin, hat-head hair into a plastic ring on the top of my head, I stopped and took note of my reflection. Cheeks flushed from shoveling, a spatter of freckles across my nose, my eyes sparkling as I chuckled at the silliness of my fancy ‘do. I was reminded of another day, when I looked in a mirror just like this one.

That was in the spring of 2009. I was living in a small basement apartment on the other side of the country, at the end of my year-long sabbatical of ‘finding myself’, on a new career path of my choosing, crushing on some new fella who actually seemed to want to spend time with me, everything was going my way. And I was still a disaster.

I had no reason and no benefit of feeling the way I did, I had just put literally everything I had to give into figuring out what was wrong with me and, if anything, I hated myself even more. But giving up had been taken off the table many years before, so I decided it was time to try something else.

Later, washing the tears from my face, I looked my reflection in the eye, just as I had done today, and asked: What would someone who liked themselves do? Not what should I do, or how could I fix it. I asked, if I was the person I want to be, what would I do?

And then I started doing it.