Written by: Jihad Mahmoud
I looked in the mirror and the first thing that met my eyes was their own reflection, two dark oceans that gripped me with their intensity and depth. That depth I always wished that someone would truly care to dive into, driven by curiosity rather than fear, driven by an urge to know more, to reach beyond the meek facade, to unveil the reality of a soul that’s been buried under layers and layers of self-doubt and willingness to please, to go past the imperfections into the perfections, the power, the strength within that only needed to be seen by someone else for their existence to be acknowledged by me.
And since no one really dared or even cared to take the journey in, I did. I dove into my eyes, looked harder, pored through these dark brown eye balls of mine and I was lost in a well of secrets that got deeper and deeper with time. Secrets that I hid even from myself to be able to survive the unbearable reality, to be able to cope with a life I no longer fit into. And I fell from presents I reject, into pasts I regret, into futures I made up that didn’t yet happen and futures I imagined that never came true. I moved from failures to successes, from shames to prides and suddenly my life looked like a tide of ups and downs that interchangeably took turns to teach me that nothing really lasts forever and that we live in a world of temporariness and limited time out of which we should make the best.
I saw the new me and the old me and couldn’t compare; there was not much difference. As if my soul was always defying the passage of time; it didn’t move along, resisted its pull toward maturity and growth and kept the child within – still the same, hopeful yet scared, daring yet unsure, loving yet insecure. I always thought that one day someone special would come and erase the fear, the uncertainty, the insecurity and free that crippled child I always carried within. But looking now deep inside, I knew better. The truth hit me like a flash of lightning; that maybe this idea of being rescued by someone else was what really crippled me all along. That waiting for this someone else’s approval had kept me imprisoned in a jail of forever shame, hesitance and disappointment. For actually, that person never came and those who came only saw what I reflected – a poor image of someone pathetic who needed others to feel whole, to feel accepted.
I looked in my mirror and went onto a journey inside my soul, a quest for truth. And what I found was a real treasure that I would never let go of – that only my true knowledge of self and my true faith in it can free me, that the only savior I should count on – after Allah – is the reflection I saw in my mirror.
