A Question of the Future

It happens two or three times a month, not a common thing at all, and yet when it happens I can think of nothing else for the entire day.
I find myself waking in the hallway, looking in the full-length mirror hanging there.
I find myself wondering:
'Who am I?'
I'm sure it's a question most people have thought and the only thing that makes my experience of this 'special' or 'different' is that it only happens on these occasions, like a structured routine.
I have to stay at home, skip work and just sit there in front of the mirror staring into my pale, closed-off eyes until I go into a near trance-like state. I do not believe the eyes are the window to the soul. At least, I know mine aren't. I see only an iris of an indistinct, blue-grey colour surrounding the deep darkness of the pupil, and nothing more.

I decided when I was thirteen years old to never mention my preoccupation with my identity to anyone.
I had, as younger children do, attempted to put across my feelings in a confusing, ambiguous manner that no one could understand. They thought I was describing how I loved looking at myself in the mirror or how I wasn't fond of my eyes and either laughed good-naturedly or consoled my gently, telling me how perfect I was to them.
A child is perfect to all those who know it. A child cannot commit evil.
An adolescent can.
I realised this at too young an age to put it in into words, however I knew I must not continue to tell the loving people who surrounded me what I was feeling. Not that they wouldn't accept it, just the fact that they wouldn't understand was a terrifying prospect to my young self. It still is.

A preoccupation can lead to obsession quite easily and, of course, if it can it usually will.
I did not have time for love as I moved rapidly through school, through my teenage years and into my twenties. I was too obsessed with that which I could not see.
Love is an easy thing to feel, to come and go as it pleases. It is comparable to identity in the way it changes, although it seems to have no certain root like identity does. It was this root that was invisible, elusive and oh so appealing to me. I was not interested in that which could be found and lost like that. I fell into adulthood with only material grades and educational success to show for all that struggle. I lost my childhood to the obsession, to which I had not found a definite answer.

But I was not immune to love. Oh no, not at all! I do not believe anyone truly is, whether it manifests as a love of the self or others. I noticed that people were beautiful, inside and out, on occasions. I fell madly in love with one of those beautiful people but my outward lack of interest was so appalling to them that they refused me.
I disgusted those around me by my seeming apathy, my social idiocy. I was surely capable of love, but not of showing it.
I fell back into my obsession with little regret.

They say that the past pre-empts the future and I'm certain that it's true.
I moved away from home as easily as I had moved away from others. I took only necessities and that mirror. No one wanted it anyway.
I remember that my mother cried as I departed, waving from the taxi window. I saw her rubbing her eyes with her work-hardened hands. I saw her struggle to see me as I vanished into the distance, trying to burn the image of me into her mind. I knew this was what she did as I was trying to do the same.
It was the first time in my life that I felt loss. I had not been the kind of child to feel disappointment or sadness or even anger when something did not go my way. I remained composed from the moment of my birth, hardly crying even as I took my first breath, my first look at the outside world.
I was not the kind of person to cry. So, I was surprised as I did indeed sob quietly in the back of the taxi then.
I have not cried again since and I doubt I will.

I sit here now, in front of that long, cold mirror in my hallway. I sit and I stare into my reflection's eyes and I realise why it is that I can see nothing of me there.
I had originally suspected there was nothing to see within me, but I now came to a new conclusion with the shocking force only a life changing epiphany can have.
Like a lightning bolt striking the earth.
I stood. I turned my eyes inward.
I cannot see what I need to in that reflection because it is just that, a mere reflection of what I believe I am. It is not me.
I looked within me until my head ached, my legs throbbed from standing, my back hurt from supporting me. My fingers and hands hurt from being balled into pathetically desperate fists.
If I can't see it now, there is nothing to see.

I saw only glints of light, reddened by blood vessels, lines of darkness, of veins. I saw a peculiar collage of moving, pulsing, living piece of the whole.
The whole that was not yet complete.
I smiled.

I have always wondered why fairy tales have such an abrupt conclusion.
I thought, when I was young, that it was just because there was nothing left for the author to say, that the story was whole.
Later, I wondered if it was a stylistic quality. I studied it to see if there was any purpose of this sudden, almost shocking conclusion to every tale. I found none.
Now, I look at these endings and I see that there is much more that the author could say. They could discuss the character's lives until their deaths. They could contemplate their loves, hates, fears and joys. They don't because no one wants to hear.
I think that maybe, in the future, I will be able to see what the author left out. I hope I will be able to fill in the gaps that leave the story incomplete and make a whole.
A person is like a story in that respect. Only in that respect.

I hold what I saw within close to my heart and I do not share it.
I have pulled something of myself out to show to the people who surround me and, although I know it is not who I am, I am content that they will be satisfied with the tiny part of myself I can give them.
I don't mind sacrificing that, at least.
I feel love again now and now I am able to show them something. I find myself in love with everyone I see. They are all beautiful to me. After what I saw inside myself, I can see that little thing inside each of them. A coldness in the eyes, a shuffled walk, a false smile. I see that they are all obsessed with that question too and I love them so much for it.
I love them for showing me I am not alone, I never been alone. I have just been blind to the multitude of the people who surround me.
They are now the ones blind to me.