Forward is the only direction.
The mirror never lies, but everything in it is backwards.
Look at what you see in the mirror. How does it change if you view yourself with eyes that can only look forward?
Here it is again: go bravely on.
Once this year I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise myself, not really because the face was puffy and red-eyed with crying, streaked with unfamiliar make-up, but because I was tired, and heart-sick, and had forgotten who I was.
Today, I see: ruffled hair, undeniably greying but doing it as if it meant it; a half-smile (has my expression of repose become a smile? wonderful, if so); square-framed spectacles, worn enough of the time now that they’ve become part of the way I look; blue eyes, rather cat-like in this particular mirror, because of the way they reflect the double lines of LEDs down the sides of it; much nose, little chin. No make-up today – it’s Saturday – but I’m enjoying playing with it. Can I see that I was crying last night? No.
This is a hard question, because so much of the work that I have done this year has been visiting the past, talking to the people I used to be, talking to the people I might have been. My future self showed up once and told me I needed some new jeans, which I got, and am, as it happens, wearing today.
Looking forward. Looking forward. Days that get longer. This face. Laughing more, listening more, looking other people in the eye. Looking myself in the eye.
Kathleen Jowitt 