To Looking in the Mirror

I spent years collecting bits of myself from strangers. It worked for me, brought me completeness. It brought me ill-faded love and conquests, brought me temporary bliss. And then it broke me. And I looked around to see the cave in my heart painted on every passing face.

I have friends who still wear that disconnected, grayish cloak in their eyes. Those whose isolation grew from their childhood and crept into their adult beds. My other friends who were given up, or abused. My friends, who, like I, found themselves young and alone, and then old and alone.

Some bare their souls and flash the world. I never could. Some have "repaired lives", adoptive parents who love them. They fit in to that regular category of people who complain about overprotectiveness, who try to rebel, who go home for 6 p.m dinners. They bring future spouses home for gatherings. Childhood photos adorn their walls. I do have those friends, the ones that have made an odd collage of their new family. They have cousins and uncles, and baby photos and funny stories yet, behind that...there is still a loneliness that is doubled at each milestone in their life.

And then there are the type like me. The type that never got that second chance, or the type that had the second chance, but lost it all too quickly. After years of foster care, waiting for my birth mother to change her mind again, waiting endlessly for her, I was adopted at age 11. Both of my adoptive parents died in the next two years. And love did not come to me until much later. I spent years of clutching my stomach, asking why, as the next man left and left again, like anyone else does. But, I became an eight-year-old girl with ponytails when men disappeared. Young love is impossible when you have no foundation, good or bad, to base your expectations on. It is all free rein, a carnival of rides and long lines.

Whether they are, 15, or 20, or 30..the adopted, or neglected, or orphaned, child reverts back to the lonely times of their childhood when love fails them. They travel back to the moment they woke up and didn't recognize anyone around them. The moment they wandered where everyone went, when they might return, and who might make them whole.

Only a few of us are lucky enough to find that completeness through meditation, education and true solitude, or better yet, true love. I never went to my mother, or father, or lost brothers and sisters, although they probably lived only minutes from where I grew up. Those memories destroyed most of my young adult life. And I never had the nerve to confront them. My mother's voice was everywhere, her hair, the smell of her skin followed me down many, many hard roads. She haunted me and still does at times.

But, I searched again and again for myself and finally found my true spirit. It was under a rock somewhere, far from my birthplace. And I found a place that I can call my own. And I found someone to build a home with. And I became a woman. And was given what I needed. And I thought it was all over. But still, my self gets lost again and again. And I wear made up skin, a made up set of brown eyes. I complete myself with new memories, new voices. My friends and I still collect bits of ourselves from strangers.

Credits: Phyllis Amalfitano Guilmette