How to self reflect in your reflection

Maybe when you turn sixteen, you’ll be surrounded by friends and family, so busy opening presents and laughing that you don’t even notice the clock hit midnight. Maybe you’ll be asleep, dreams filled with childhood bedrooms getting stripped of its wallpaper or nightmares of a rocking horse that doesn’t stand still.x

Or maybe you’ll be alone in your bedroom, staring at the clock counting down to 12. And then it's your birthday. There is no confetti, no celebratory music ringing in your head. It’s silent. And then maybe you’ll turn to your mirror and simply stare. You look at yourself the same way you look at a stranger. You notice the imperfections and slopes of your face; the dark circles under your eyes, the crease on your forehead. But you also notice the way your eyes slant and the way your lips quirk up, and maybe for the first time in 16 years, you’ll think to yourself that you look like what art is. A collection of colors and textures and shapes that form a cohesive image, something that looks right. And maybe, if you look at yourself the same way you look at models on magazine covers or people in pretentious indie movies, you’ll even think to yourself that you look pretty.

Before 2021, you admittedly barely looked at yourself in the mirror. If you saw yourself in a reflection or picture, maybe you were hard to recognize. Maybe some fear of vanity and self obsession caused you to avoid selfies, or maybe it was insecurity. Either way, by the time you turn 16, you might begin to memorize your features, study them as if it was midterms week. It’s not vain to find beauty in yourself. It’s not vain to appreciate the orchestra of features that assemble you. You are a construction zone of feelings and looks, forming a building that stands tall, with a purpose.

And maybe you never really bought into the “self-love” mumbo jumbo forced down your throat by TV shows and bad ad campaigns. Maybe it was too commercialized for you to take it seriously, and the road to “self-love” was bumpier than anticipated.

Maybe, just maybe, you’ve fallen in love with many things in your 16 years of life, with lots of people and things. And it’s time to start falling in love with yourself, too.