Michelle Nhung Le

Posted on: 22/8/2021

I opened my eyes to the sound of knocking on the mirrors. I was trapped, yet again. The room apparently had shrunk and the mirror moved close. As a result, the fluorescent lights kept bouncing off the mirror and lit up the entire room, making the room both pale and bright. Or hallway, to describe it more correctly as the room now stretched on so far that reflections bounced off each other. I turned my head sideways and looked at the mirror. Finally, I saw myself. He was knocking for me. I saw my face, my skinny body, and my eyes. Yet he was not exactly me. He had slicked combed-back hair and a light smirk, exuberating a confidence I had never possessed. And he wore a suit, with an actual tie and everything. I never owned such a fancy-looking suit. Or any kind of suit at all to be honest. Behind him was a team of enviers, checking out some brand-famous car he owned. He was like someone from the Fortune 500 or something. The next mirror showed another me knocking on the surface of the glass. This cool-looking dude got the look cut out of the latest fashion paper – white t-shirt, denim jeans. He didn’t need the spotlight, he was the spotlight. Everyone was turning back to check out who he was. And I looked back at my bony self and asked: Who am I?

I let the reflections lead me through the hall, hoping that maybe I could find someone that might resemble me. Maybe that’s the way out I guessed, at least that’s what happened in movies. There’s that nerdy one with stacks of books stored inside his mind that breathed both wisdom and trepidation into everyone’s ears. There’s the community man, with lines of photographs of the orphanages, hospitals, care centers he had visited, but none saw his footsteps back again. There’s the party guy, with sparkles in his jeans, jerking crazily in the middle of the dance floor, all the people around him following his manic foot. There’s the golden boy, raising his arms at every question, getting nothing but As – the apple in the eyes of teachers. There’s the husky jock that could actually play sport with flair, bumping chests or high-fiving other teammates. There’s the artsy type, always with a sketchbook in hand, living in a state that others would equate to the mystery of the Loch Ness monster.

Even with all its little twists and tweaks, all the reflections have my beady little eyes. These eyes lured me forward, making me feel as if I was these people. While their eyes are lustrous, calling, reeling me into their fantasy, none of them actually appealed to me. To be honest, I didn’t know if these people were actually me. Doctor, lawyer, artist, entrepreneur, lame office worker and many more – they looked like me, but all of them lead lives that I have no idea or any current interest in. Outside, I am still me, plain and clueless me. All of them expected me to become them, with their obsessive knocking on the surface of the mirror, trying their best to drag me into their world. And all this time I had been chasing after these reflections, hoping to find the one that was truly me. At first, I thought it would be easy, given the table of options presented to me. But it just added to the dilemma, not to mention the incessant knocking reminding me that I needed to make a choice in this instance. They all seemed glamorous, something I should strive for. I was just not sure I should. How was I going to choose which of the reflections actually reflect me?

And I kept walking, trying my best to find me. Knock, knock, knock. I chased after the reflections. Occasionally I stopped at some to stare close at them, almost opening the mirror panes only to hesitate to walk in. As I marched on, the knocking intensified. The reflections banged the mirror’s surface with such effort as if it was my duty to achieve their statuses. Bang, bang, bang. Just when I thought they had stopped knocking, the hands warped out of the mirror panes and came reaching for me. They grasped me, pulling me into worlds of their own, trying their best to force me to become them. At first, I tried to untangle myself from these hands, running away with all my might. But soon enough, they caught me. They tweaked my hair, my clothes, the way I talked, the way I walked. They made me do this, act that, play this, think that. And to tell the truth, it was kind of fun, trying on new clothes, new styles, new tastes. I was being built.

But after a while, things got messy. I got pulled from mirrors to mirrors, bouncing off from being shy and quiet to loud and abrasive, sporty to nerdy. I was all over the place. I only got a couple of dollars and there were just too many clothes to choose from. How could I know which fit me and which didn’t? The hands yanked me so hard that I often felt sick and dizzy. All they made me do to build me up to be them pushed me to the edge of sanity, with one foot already on the drop of a nervous breakdown. And when I managed to become sleazy, semi-fulfilled versions of them, I realized how ridiculous I looked. I found out that entrepreneurship required an overpoweringly extroverted personality and a love for networking that I just hated. And community service was now simply on-the-surface acts to gain the immediate tension of oneself rather than the long-term care of those that should be cared for. I hid under layers and layers of clothes until I looked back at myself and asked “What the hell am I now?”

I knew that I had to do this. I had to break out from this wretched place, from the hands that kept pushing and pulling me. I freed myself from the grip of these reflections. I needed to be rescued from the other MEs. So I ran. The hands stretched further to grasp me and I just kept running. I ran and ran but the hallways just seemed endless. The endless hallway of expectant eyes and biting hands. If anything, the hallways just got narrower and narrower, allowing the hands to capture me more easily. I ran with all my might, swinging my arms at all directions, trying to block off all the reaching hands. My eyes kept shut to avoid any glances from the reflections. And I fell. Not because of my natural clumsiness, but it was the reflections. They slid their feet up and tripped me. I lay flat on the ground, and the hands grasped and pulled me at all directions. It was a tug of war and I was the rope. I screamed.

I squirmed convulsively with the sheer power of a manic seizuring man. I broke loose from the grips of the hands and looked deep into the eyes of these reflections. They were brown, beady, and small. But they were not mine. They were not me. They had never been me. Those eyes lacked the spark, the fire. Those eyes lacked the life in me. Those are the eyes of a robot. And I knew then what I had to do. With all the might I had left, I charged myself into the mirrors. They shattered into millions and millions of pieces. And I waged on, running down the hall, crashing myself into mirrors. Tiny shards managed to pierce into my skin, and I was bleeding awfully. But I was not to be stopped. I was too exhilarated, the pain just added to the adrenaline. One by one, the reflections shattered. Some put up a good fight but in the end, all laid shattered into pieces on the ground. Joy filled my empty heart and for once I felt as though I was going somewhere.

I was so occupied wrecking these mirrors that after a while, the hallway had no mirrors left. All that laid before me was a pathway of shattered glass. Wasn’t this supposed to be an endless hallway of mirrors? Who had shattered these mirrors already? I walked on and found nothing but shards of broken glass, glittering on the ground. It was after a while that I saw a ripped piece of cloth, hanging on what was left of a mirror pane. And I realized. I had been walking in a circle this whole time. All this time, I thought I was going somewhere, that the ones in the mirror panes would guide me. I was dead wrong. I was trapped by my own selves, going in loops and loops, guided blindly by my own illusions. I looked down at the shattered mirror on the ground. A reflection looked back at me. He had shards of glass in his face, his arms were bleeding badly. He was plain, a bleeding number zero, scattered in various pieces of glass. But his eyes were lit with youth and fire. And I knew then that I had found my way out.

I found myself.

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