Fugue State
On Mirrors and Recognition
Welcome to Muhajir, a newsletter about what moves me. If you’ve opened this before and enjoyed reading, please consider subscribing:
This summer, I let my sleep schedule be stupid. No one in Karachi seems to operate before 10 am with the sad exception of school children and teachers, and I felt that my late-night watches of Apothecary Diary were more important than preserving my Madison schedule. Which is, frankly, largely informed by having class and Cleo perching her small body on my skull to scream-meow at 7:29 am every morning.
These nights were important to me. The days were hot and long, filled with strange research interactions and even stranger emotions about the interactions. The evenings were time spent with my dad and brother, whom I love, but are… my dad and brother. But after 10 pm I could lock the door and pretend to be asleep.
Instead, I would curl up, fully dressed on my fully made bed, and prop my laptop up sideways and watch hours of tv. One of these nights, I emerged from my anime-fuelled fugue state and caught sight of my face in the huge mirror next to my bed. I still don’t know if I caught a weird angle, or if the lighting was off, or if I was just feeling crazy that night— but I didn’t recognize my own face.
I kind of crawled off the bed to press my nose against the glass and stared at my face for some long minutes, pressing my fingers into my cheeks to mold them into something more familiar. My face only looked stranger (and my pores larger) every moment I stared at it, like when you look at the word ‘yacht’ for too long and realize it can’t possibly be real, so I stopped.
I washed my face and went to bed, but between the recent dopamine rush of watching TV and having a puzzle to solve, I couldn’t sleep. So I grabbed my phone and started building an album called “face?” comprised of pictures from the last few years. I got all the way back to my 25th birthday party before I was vindicated— my face had changed.
Not, perhaps, enough for other people to notice. But, looking at the photos, it was strange that it had taken me so long. The shift was most distinct around the time I turned 27, but I suppose that period of time had too much stimuli for me to bother with my physical appearance.
The week before I turned 27, I was attached to a boyfriend and a city that I felt fine but uninspired by. The week after, I was separated from both.
For about 6 months after this break, whenever I looked in the mirror, I could only see the most beautiful, single, and awesome person of all time. God, what a time for my ego. I was probably insufferable, and I really wasn’t self-reflecting about anything.
I’ve been thinking about how recognition is a tricky thing, as are mirrors. And I’m interested in what age achieves, particularly in the way of transformation. Even recently, just with the change in seasons, I’ve been staring at my face a little too long when I pass a mirror. The winter always does this to me-- I become pale in a way that I forget to expect and still can’t accept as a natural seasonal difference.
At least my physical self can rely on mirrors. Recently two of my close friends casually described me as ‘disciplined’ in a throwaway comment and I wondered about it for days. I guess I am, although I’ve never viewed myself that way. Maybe I have been recently. Maybe now I am forever— it could be a new skill I’ve gained through the hectic schedule of graduate school and balancing my academic priorities with my personal ones.
I’ve been relying more on practice and process when goals and tangible successes (or failures) feel difficult to conceive of. It’s too early to tell how my new little strategy will shape my view of myself. The last couple years have been an exercise in commitment for me— giving in to my desires and my ambitions, working towards goals that felt too tender to consider, fixing old relationships that I don’t even want to think about. And I feel bad about these things often. But one thing that reliably gets me out of my doubting headspace is the reminder that all the people I love being around also love being around me. Which is a mirror in itself— one less tricky than glass.
It must be an age thing, but a while back I noticed that when I look at people, I see, overlaying their now version, all the versions of them that I've known, so that the now version doesn't stand alone, it's a composite and I know that it, too, will change with time and circumstance. And I love and appreciate the whole mix of then and now and future. In myself, I appreciate the learning and layers even while regretting the ignorance and mistakes (and knowing that future me will feel the same way about present me). All we can do is try to do our best, open-minded and willing to learn. So, pale winter faced you remembers browner summer faced you and knows she'll be back; more importantly, you know that discipline may come and go, but the learning from the leaving and the trying is a layer that will stay. Anyway. I'm one of the people who so appreciates that you're in the world, in all your incarnations.
beautiful as usual