Just A Reflection

I'm an optimist at least 85.5% of the time. But these days, gloom conspires against me. I don't even recognize the person I see in the mirror any more. On days where I dare to look, I see a woman whose brown eyes no longer shine like they once did. My eyes. Everything about me has faded, and I'm not just referring to a lost youth, because it's possible for time to take hold of you without leaving you completely haggard, ancient and annihilated. I'm not one of the lucky ones. Of late, I feel like the mortally wounded. And I'm not just talking about the emotional and the physical, although my physical is definitely a symptom of the problem and pretty much comparable to the aftermath of a train wreck. I'm referring to the metaphysical, all that stuff in between that once filled me with possibilities. Yesterday, just yesterday it seems, I was a dreamer who believed anything and everything was possible. I was a romantic who believed in a love that could last a lifetime. I believed in a magic that swirled around me like a fine mist. I could feel it on the peripheral of my soul. I was invincible. These days, not so much. I've lost my mom, my brother and my self; I'm desolate, like a planet that's used up all of its natural resources. Washed up. I've become an illusion of my former self, and my fear is that one day that reflection in the mirror will no longer be recognizable even to me. A frightening thought. So what do I do? Well, I should be paying a psychologist to lie on a couch in a spanky office, talking about my childhood, my dysfunctional relationships and my grief, all the while hiccuping spastically into a bunch of tissues, but I can't afford it. So, I'll just blog myself to a reinvention and see how that works.