Finding Losses

It starts - it starts with mirrors. I think maybe it's how everything begins, the way all things began, but we all do that -- I'm just like everyone else, trying to assume my experiences are yours, to make what happened to me be the same as what happens to the world. We only see through our eyes, and everything we see is a reflection of ourselves.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like that. Life's not a poem. But it's true (for a certain value of true): if we are something, we assume everyone else is. It's hard, to think someone wouldn't lie if you would in their situation. Little things like that. I don't even know what I did, to be honest. I just woke up one day and looked into the mirror and I wasn't looking back out.

Things are funny, that way. We can't actually see ourselves. We never even really see how others see us. But we look at our reflection, at some imagine in a mirror, and we assume that's us. Even if we change, we keep assuming the reflection is real, that it matters. Even when the best of mirrors always reflects left to right, we somehow think it's showing us a real thing.

But it wasn't.

Rebecca had left me, for some other guy. John - John something. I never got his full name, never asked. A plumber or something; said she was tired of business suits and the mentality that went with them. The day after I woke up and stared into the mirror and someone else stared back, unshaven and hollow-eyed, with a look like a man one turn of the rack from madness.

And it wasn't me. I wasn't certain of many things, but I knew that couldn't be me. I had a 401K stock plan, a brand new Toyota, and a condo that was entirely paid off. I had two grown kids I loved, an ex-wife I pretended had died of ebola, and had - until recently - Rebecca in my life. It might not be the best life in the world, but it hadn't been the worst of them.

And yet this stranger stared at me as if looking out from the depths of Hell, or somewhere in Jersey.

What did I do? Well, I waved my hand, and he waved his. I shaved, but he didn't look any better. If anything, trying to cover it up seemed to make it worse. I went to work anyway, and no one commented. Not a single person noticed a thing. I stared at a dead man in a water cooler on break, wondering what everyone else saw in their mirrors, but I never found the courage to ask.

I've been passed over for two promotions in the past five years, you know. Or don't, but still: I think that's what it is. Just a hallucination because of my lack of courage, fortitude, all things like that. But it's not like things that that matter anymore, you know? You don't get ahead in the real world if you cling to honour and decency. That's practically business 101.

Christ, I don't even know why I'm telling you this. I guess because your reflection looked -- needy -- in the napkin dispenser. And you remind me of someone I can't remember. Me, maybe. If I was a woman, I mean; I don't even know what I mean. I think I lost something, though, or mortgaged it away, and I'd like it back. And I think you could help me, even if words can't explain why.

I could pay you for the sex, if that would help. We could screw our way to a better world instead of screwing up this one some more? Come on, don't be like that. I'm trying to be honest, even if it hurts you. We could fix our reflections, if we try hard enough. I think you can fill the emptiness inside me; I can't love myself enough to do it right now.

Please? I said I'd pay you. I wasn't lying. I'll make sure to wear a condom. I just don't think - I don't think I can wake up to those eyes in a mirror again. I mean it! It's you or the bridge. We make love or I die, and you can have that staring at you from a mirror some day. This is your chance to save someone, my chance to be saved.

So what do you say?