The Birthday Mirror

My birthday was coming up and surprisingly Paul finally remembered what day it was. He asked beforehand if there was something in particular I might want. That’s not entirely his fault since I’ve not been terribly vocal about when my birthday is since we’ve met. I initially gave him my usual answer which was, “Hmmm, not really,” and secretly hoped he would just forget it.

Birthdays were not something to be celebrated.

Birthdays, celebrations, achievements, and the attention that comes with them belonged to him, my ex.

The Birthday Ghost

For a long time, the calendar was a minefield. You don’t realize how much space a person can take up until they’ve claimed every big event as their own. We learned, myself and both of my kids, sadly, to ignore birthdays, accomplishments, and milestones that should have been celebrated. We stopped congratulating each other. We stopped making things a big deal.

It was safer not to call attention to yourself. If it was something positive? Heck no, that was the most dangerous thing to do of all. It meant you were trying to steal his thunder. You were trying to take someone’s adoration away from him and direct it to yourself. That was a crime in our house.

Stealing the Thunder

When you live with a person like that, his ire turns toward you the second you feel good. He would take your accomplishment, the very thing that made you feel like a person, and he would defile it. He would burn it. He would make you wish you had never even tried in the first place.

He would take whatever it was and maim it until it was wretched and broken and sad. He would tell you it was a reflection of your own ugliness. He would say you did this. You own this horror. He would look you in the eye and ask how you dared to think it was worthy of the light. He would ask how you thought you were worthy of praise or compliments. So, we all learned to hide the things we truly cared about in the darkest corners. We let them cower there, trembling at the footsteps overhead, fearing discovery.

The Shadow Attacks

Logic would say why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you argue your worth? We did, in the beginning. But often the attacks came at you from odd angles, from the shadows, subtle, in ways that you wouldn’t suspect that they were even attacks. They were the seeds of guilt that he watered and fed until they overgrew reason and love and light.

They left us in the darkness below. We withered, faded, and weakened until the only thought was base survival. Celebration? That took too much energy and threatened survival. Better to let it go. Slowly, bit by bit, the things that gave us joy or strength or confidence were ripped away to feed the brambles of guilt and pain that became our emotional home. It’s like trying to maintain escape velocity while someone is constantly adding lead weights to your pockets. Eventually, you just stop trying to fly.

Small, Tentative Wins

On my first birthday after I left, I didn’t even tell Paul until bedtime. I thanked him for the best birthday I had had in years. We had gone out for dinner, Thai or Mexican or something, but at a sit down restaurant, nothing fancy. After we came home, we snuggled on the couch and watched a movie. It was wonderful. It was a small attempt at doing something nice on my birthday. At that time, that was the best I could do.

A couple of years later, I did have a roller skating party to celebrate turning 50 with friends. I even had friends of my own to celebrate with! This truly had been inconceivable before, that I had friends and that they would go out of their way to do something, anything for me. But this was progress.

I still struggle with it. I can’t imagine celebrating for a month as I have seen some people do. But I have gotten better by acknowledging that my existence is kind of a cool thing and, you know, maybe even worth celebrating. You don’t just wake up one day and feel perfectly worthy. You just keep showing up.

Last year, my daughter took me to a Fork & Film show, a movie paired with themed fine dining experience. It was a showing of Ratatouille, and it was so much fun and super delicious. That was definitely something I wouldn’t have done on my own and it was fantastic.

The Mirror in the Snow

So, this year when Paul asked about my birthday, I didn’t really know. I don’t like to take advantage. In the past when my kids asked, I try to keep suggestions reasonable, $100-ish or less if possible. There wasn’t really anything that had caught my eye or that had been sitting in my Amazon cart for a while.

And then Benjamin Viulet posted about his new Mirror. I had been following his Instagram page because his photography art is beautiful in that aching way that speaks to your soul. it makes you remember that you DO have a heart, and maybe, just maybe, it isn’t cold and dead and dark after all. His art challenges you to breathe a little fire and life and love back into your soul even though it hurts like fuckall. Even though you kind of like how comfortable you’ve gotten with the lie that it doesn’t matter. It’s like when your fingers get frostbite and getting them warm, waking the nerves back up is incredibly painful.

His social media posts are fun because he shows you what they go through to create the images, the behind-the-scenes, building the sets, the hardships his models have to endure, how they are at the mercy of what nature throws at them. He’s an incredible storyteller, both with his words and his visuals. I watched his posts about taking this vibrant, beautiful model with flaming red hair out onto the ice, how they tried to keep her warm until they covered her in snow to take the photo. It was amazing to see the process. When he revealed the end result along with the story that went with it…

I cried…hard.

That story with the image of the mermaid on the snow, go read and see it here, I can’t do justice to it with a summary. I felt that one so hard it knocked me to my next birthday, holy moly geezus wowza. And then he posted that prints were being offered in his gallery. My heart said I had to have one. Sadly, at that moment, my bank account reminded me that I had real bills to pay and a fairly limited income to cover them. I didn’t have the leeway to add this to the budget. Logic and brain are helping me stay out of debt so I have to respect that. But my heart wouldn’t let it go, couldn’t.

Finding the Dreamfisher

So, I asked Paul. I didn’t want to ask for this. Exceptional art is expensive and this definitely was more than my self imposed gift request limit. Plus, it was asking for something for me. But I did it anyway. I did add the caveat when I asked that I knew this was a big ask. I wasn’t expecting him to say yes. He did grumble about it a bit and said he would see what he could do. It was just, I had to at least ask. I left it with the assumption that would be the end of it.

We were just hanging out the other afternoon. He was watching TV and I was doing some work on my computer. Then he puts our song on and goes to the door and comes back with a flat square box. I looked at him, skeptically, hopefully, scared to even hope that it was what it looked like it could be. He said, “Happy Birthday! A little early.”

It was the Dreamfisher Mirror in all of its glory.

And I cried. Again. Like a dork.

This Mirror truly reflects back to me what I was, what it felt like, especially in the last, oh I don’t know, about eight, maybe ten years with my ex. Misery is interminable and who’s counting anyway? Frozen on the snow wishing I could be back free to swim and chase dreams.

Then, on another level, realizing that I was also the Dreamfisher, holding myself back with logic and excuses. So many times, I’ve listened to my fears grown large echoing back doubts in my own voice that kept my soul stranded on the ice. My soul waiting, not daring to hope that maybe someday I could swim in the ocean of dreams again.

It’s been a slow journey back to myself, to be able to swim with my hopes and my dreams again. I’m stronger now, hopefully a little wiser. The Mirror hangs above my workspace where I see it daily. Thank you, Paul, for being an amazing partner and getting this for my birthday. And thank you, Benjamin for the reflection and reminder of who we are, in the depths where we seldom dare to look. I will treasure it always.

I’m finally making friends with my emotional closet monsters, making conscious choices about who I want to be, and having a whale of a time doing it.

Awkwardly Onward! Rowr.