Thursday, December 3, 2015

Vanity Mirrors

We live in a world where people shoot Botox into their faces to paralyze wrinkles, smear cream concoctions onto their skin to look youthful, shoot collagen into their lips to look sexier, pop pills for longer sustained erections, and IV drip vitamins into their veins to feel peppy, less hung-over, or more energized. Costing hundreds and thousands of dollars. All part of doing business in a shallow surface world of aspiring beauty.


I live in a world, along with a lot of other survivors, where pills are taken to just barely survive a regular day, Botox is shot into muscles in an attempt to combat pain, creams are rubbed along sore muscles when shots aren't enough, vitamins are injected monthly due to deficiencies, and iron is intravenously infused as needed to prevent crippling spasms, fatigue, and the actual threat of death. A world leaving us emotionally and physically exhausted, battered, and bruised.

This is a world where people push through jobs which deteriorate them physically just to keep health insurance only to have to fight with insurance companies to get each treatment which can cost more than they make in a whole month. Only to have to do it again thirty, or sixty, or ninety days later. A world where every co-pay takes away money needed for other important things like food and electricity.

A world where luxury is an option only for a privileged few and outer beauty doesn't even get to be an afterthought much less an option.

In a world where people are judged for how they look and what they have, it's hard not to be judgmental, jealous, hurt, angry, or sickened for having so little and actually needing so much on a basic survival level when witnessing others casually living on a more superficial level. It is very hard when deep down in the suffocating muck not to look towards the heavens with envy and desperation at just the chance to breathe in fresh air.

Truth is, people have a right to want to look better, feel better, dress better, travel better, and just plain live better. People have a right to spend their money any way they choose on anything that they want, including the pursuit of beauty and happiness. Just as with that same sentiment, people should have the right not to suffer, not to fight for treatments, and not to endure pain just to breathe or pay for their next breath. 

The world is a deep place while the souls who reside on it are thoughtful and complex. We all must live in it and respect that even in the shallowest pools there are reflections of meaningful depth. 

We can't lose ourselves in reflecting on the reflections in other people's mirrors or judge how they see themselves based on the limited view of what we see reflected of them. 

We must inhale and contemplate our own reflections. We must strive to make the world in our mirrors a better place where we can survive so that the reality within our mirrors can expand out into the rest of our world.